--- title: "Microsoft Employees Gave OpenAI’s CEO Drama an Amazingly Vulgar Name" description: "The OpenAI CEO debacle was so dramatic that people at Microsoft developed a vulgar nickname to refer to it." date: "2023-12-01" modified: "2023-12-01" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/microsoft-openai-drama-name" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "OpenAI" tags: - "microsoft" - "OpenAI" - "sam altman" - "the digest" --- # Microsoft Employees Gave OpenAI’s CEO Drama an Amazingly Vulgar Name ![The OpenAI CEO debacle was so dramatic that people at Microsoft developed a vulgar nickname to refer to it.]() *\Image: Alex Wong via Getty / Futurism\* ## Turkey Solution The OpenAI CEO debacle apparently [blindsided its close partner Microsoft]() so dramaticically that employees there developed a vulgar nickname for the fracas. As [*The New Yorker* reports](), the fiasco that began two weeks ago with Sam Altman's surprise firing became known to insiders at Microsoft, which has a multi-billion dollar partnership with OpenAI, as the "Turkey-Shoot Clusterfuck," a seeming reference to it taking place just before the Thanksgiving holiday. By accounts both [external]() and [internal](), "clusterfuck" is the correct terminology to refer to the outrageous sequence of events — the exact cause of which is still publicly unknown, and according to the Microsoft insiders that spoke to *The New Yorker*, not explicated to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, either. According to those same insiders, Nadella was literally speechless when he got a call from an unnamed OpenAI exec telling him two Fridays ago that in about 20 minutes, the board was going to fire its popular CEO. He soon afterward called Adam D’Angelo, one of the members of said board, to ask what the hell was going on, and was met with the same vague, boilerplate response that had been given to the press: that Altman had not been "consistently candid in his communications" with the governing body. When pressed, D'Angelo admitted that the CEO had not done anything improper — but, per the magazine's sources, refused to elaborate. ## Chaos Reigns In an intensive deep dive into the strange marriage between these disparate firms, *The New Yorker*'s sources jointly paint an overarching story that rings true to in-the-know outsiders: that the board was either [scared of something]() OpenAI had been working on under Altman — perhaps its [ironically-named Q\* program](), or perhaps something else we don't know about — or that they were concerned he was going to "go rogue," as the piece put it. The OpenAI board, which [has been controversially restructured]() in the wake of what many [consider a coup](), seemed to expect Nadella and Microsoft to go along with sacking Altman for some reason. Instead, the company chose to support the ousted CEO by essentially offering to rebuild his wing of the firm within its confines. At the end of the day, it's still remarkably unclear why the board chose to fire the CEO — and as one unnamed OpenAI executive told *The New Yorker*, it's still being shockingly tight-lipped about the entire thing. "Unless the board’s goal was the destruction of the entire company," the executive said, "they seemed inexplicably devoted to making the worst possible choice every time they made a decision." Once again, "clusterfuck" seems to be a vulgar-yet-accurate term for what went down at OpenAI around Thanksgiving — and there's no telling what the next chapter for the company itself or its partnership with Microsoft will hold. **More on OpenAI:** [*There Are Now Zero Women on OpenAI's Board*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()