Altman's knack for dodging bullets

Hint - bigshot friends like Airbnb's Chesky, Microsoft's Nadella, and Sun Microsystems' Khosla have a hand in helping him out of tight situations

- Deepa Seetharaman

• Altman has lost the confidence of several top leaders in the three organizations he has directed
• Altman's firing and swift reversal of fortune followed a pattern in his career, which began in 2005

The OpenAI CEO lost the confidence of top leaders in the three organizations he has directed, yet each time he's rebounded to greater heights.

Minutes after the board of OpenAI fired CEO Sam Altman, saying he failed to be truthful, he exchanged texts with Brian Chesky, the billionaire chief executive of Airbnb.

"So brutal," Altman wrote to his friend. Later that day, Chesky told Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI's biggest partner, "Sam has the support of the Valley." It was no exaggeration.

Over the weekend, Altman rallied some of Silicon Valley's most influential CEOs and investors to his side, including Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures, OpenAI's first venture-capital investor; Ron Conway, an early investor in Google and Facebook; and Nadella. Days later, Altman returned as OpenAI's chief executive.

Altman's firing and swift reversal of fortune followed a pattern in his career, which began when he dropped out of Stanford University in 2005 and gained the reputation as a Silicon Valley visionary. Over the past two decades, Altman has lost the confidence of several top leaders in the three organizations he has directed. At every crisis point, Altman, 38 years old, not only rebounded but climbed to more powerful roles with the help of an expanding network of powerful allies.