Sam Altman calls brief ouster 'a real moment of growing up' for OpenAI

• Sam Altman says the corporate drama around his ouster was "a real moment of growing up" for OpenAI.
• Altman was fired as OpenAI's CEO in November and rehired within less than a week.

Sam Altman's ouster from OpenAI was "a real moment of growing up" for the company, he said in a new interview.

Altman briefly discussed the saga on an episode of Bill Gates' podcast, "Unconfuse Me," released Thursday. The bulk of the episode was recorded before Altman was dismissed as OpenAI's CEO, but a short clip at the start featured him and Gates catching up again later to address the corporate drama.

"It's been so crazy. I'm alright. It's a very exciting time," Altman said.

"A lot of people have remarked on the fact that the team has never felt more productive or more optimistic or better," he added. "And so I guess that's like the silver lining of all of this. In some sense, this was like a real moment of growing up for us. We are very motivated to become better and to become a company ready for the challenges in front of us."

Altman was fired from OpenAI in November in a failed boardroom coup, with the board of directors at the time saying they'd lost "confidence in his ability" to lead and that he was "not consistently candid in his communications."

In a week marked by around-the-clock negotiations, the company had two interim CEOs, Satya Nadella poached Altman to lead a new AI research team at Microsoft, and 95% of OpenAI employees threatened to jump ship if Altman wasn't brought back.

Altman ultimately returned to OpenAI as CEO days after his firing, and several of OpenAI's board members involved in his dismissal departed.

Altman has touched on his firing before. In a December interview with Time editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs, he said, "It's been extremely painful for me personally, but I actually think it's been great for OpenAI."

"I wouldn't wish it on an enemy. But it did have an extremely positive effect on the company," he said.