OpenAI on Friday announced its new board and the wrap-up of an internal investigation by U.S. law firm WilmerHale into the events leading up to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s ouster.
Sam Altman will also rejoin OpenAI’s board.
The new board members are:
Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who is also on the Board of Directors at Pfizer and on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Nicole Seligman, former EVP and Global General Counsel of Sony and President of Sony Entertainment, who is also on the Board of Directors at Paramount Global, Meira GTx and Intuitive Machines, Inc.
Fidji Simo, CEO and Chair of Instacart, who is also on the Board of Directors at Shopify.
The three new members will “work closely with current board members Adam D’Angelo, Larry Summers and Bret Taylor as well as Greg, Sam, and OpenAI’s senior management,” according to a release.
OpenAI will continue to expand the board moving forward, according to a Zoom call with reporters.
OpenAI did not publish the investigation report but provided a summary of the findings.
“The review concluded there was a significant breakdown of trust between the prior board and Sam and Greg,” Taylor said, adding that the review also “concluded the board acted in good faith… [and] did not anticipate some of the instability that led afterwards.”
Taylor also said the board’s concerns did not arise regarding concerns over product safety and security, OpenAI’s finances or statements to customers or business partners, that it was “simply a breakdown in trust between the board and Mr. Altman.”
WilmerHale’s investigation began in December, and the lawyers submitted their report today, which included dozens of interviews with OpenAI’s prior board members and advisors, current executives and other witnesses. The investigation also involved reviewing more than 30,000 documents, according to a release.
“We have unanimously concluded that Sam and Greg are the right leaders for OpenAI,” Bret Taylor, chair of OpenAI’s board, said in a release.
“I am very grateful to Bret and Larry and WilmerHale,” Altman said on the Zoom call with reporters. He added, speaking of CTO Mira Murati, “Mira in particular is incremental to OpenAI all the time … but through that period in November, she has done an amazing job helping to lead the company.”
He added that he is “excited to be moving forward here” and for the situation to be “over.” He also mentioned he wished he had acted differently regarding differences in opinion with the board.
In November, OpenAI’s board ousted Altman, prompting resignations – or threats of resignations – including an open letter signed by virtually all of OpenAI’s employees, and uproar from investors, including Microsoft. Within a week, Altman was back at the company, and board members Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley and Ilya Sutskever, who had voted to oust Altman, were out. Adam D’Angelo, who had also voted to oust Altman, stayed on the board.
When Altman was asked about Sutskever’s status on the Zoom call with reporters, he said there were no updates to share.
“I love Ilya… I hope we work together for the rest of our careers, my career, whatever,” Altman said. “Nothing to announce today.”
After ChatGPT’s launch in November 2022, it broke records at the time as the fastest-growing consumer app in history, and now has about 100 million weekly active users, along with more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies using the platform, according to OpenAI. Last year, Microsoft invested an additional $10 billion in the company, making it the biggest AI investment of the year, according to PitchBook, and OpenAI has reportedly closed a deal that will allow employees to sell shares at an $86 billion valuation, though the deal reportedly took longer to close than expected due to the events surrounding Altman’s ouster.
The rollercoaster couple of weeks at the company are still affecting it months later.
This month, billionaire tech magnate Elon Musk sued OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty, court filings revealed on Thursday.
In his complaint, Musk and his attorneys allege that the ChatGPT maker “has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft.” They also argue that this arrangement goes against a founding agreement and 2015 certification of incorporation that OpenAI established with Musk, who was a pivotal donor to a cofounder of OpenAI in its early years.
As part of Microsoft’s contract with OpenAI, the tech giant only has rights to OpenAI’s “pre-AGI” technology, and it is up to OpenAI’s board to determine whether the company has reached that milestone. Musk argued in his filing that since the OpenAI board shuffle in November – when Toner, McCauley and Sutskever were removed – the new board is “ill-equipped” to independently determine whether OpenAI has reached AGI and therefore whether its technology is outside the scope of the exclusivity deal with Microsoft.
Lawyers told CNBC that they had doubts about the legal viability of Musk’s case, and OpenAI has said it plans to file a motion to dismiss all of Musk’s claims.
In response to the high-profile lawsuit, OpenAI reproduced old emails from Musk in which the Tesla and SpaceX CEO encouraged the rising startup to raise at least $1 billion in funding, and agreed that it should “start being less open” over time and “not share” the company’s science with the public.
Musk’s lawsuit also follows some controversy over Altman’s previous chip endeavors and investments.
Just before Altman’s brief ouster, he was reportedly seeking billions for a new and not-yet-formed chip venture code-named “Tigris” to eventually compete with Nvidia, traveling to the Middle East to raise money from investors.
In 2018, Altman personally invested in an AI chip startup called Rain Neuromorphics, based near OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters, and in 2019, OpenAI signed a letter of intent to spend $51 million on Rain’s chips. In December, the U.S. compelled a Saudi Aramco-backed venture capital firm to sell its shares in Rain.
White House trade advisor Peter Navarro chastised Apple CEO Tim Cook on Monday over the company’s response to pressure from the Trump administration to make more of its products outside of China.
“Going back to the first Trump term, Tim Cook has continually asked for more time in order to move his factories out of China,” Navarro said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “I mean it’s the longest-running soap opera in Silicon Valley.”
CNBC has reached out to Apple for comment on Navarro’s criticism.
President Donald Trump has in recent months ramped up demands for Apple to move production of its iconic iPhone to the U.S. from overseas. Apple’s flagship phone is produced primarily in China, but the company has increasingly boosted production in India, partly to avoid the higher cost of Trump’s tariffs.
Trump in May warned Apple would have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the U.S. In separate remarks, Trump said he told Cook, “I don’t want you building in India.”
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Analysts and supply chain experts have argued it would be impossible for Apple to completely move iPhone production to the U.S. By some estimates, a U.S.-made iPhone could cost as much as $3,500.
Navarro said Cook isn’t shifting production out of China quickly enough.
“With all these new advanced manufacturing techniques and the way things are moving with AI and things like that, it’s inconceivable to me that Tim Cook could not produce his iPhones elsewhere around the world and in this country,” Navarro said.
Apple currently makes very few products in the U.S. During Trump’s first term, Apple extended its commitment to assemble the $3,000 Mac Pro in Texas.
In February, Apple said it would spend $500 billion within the U.S., including on assembling some AI servers.
CoreWeave founders Brian Venturo, at left in sweatshirt, and Mike Intrator slap five after ringing the opening bell at Nasdaq headquarters in New York on March 28, 2025.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Artificial intelligence hyperscaler CoreWeave said Monday it will acquire Core Scientific, a leading data center infrastructure provider, in an all-stock deal valued at approximately $9 billion.
Coreweave stock fell about 4% on Monday while Core Scientific stock plummeted about 20%. Shares of both companies rallied at the end of June after the Wall Street Journal reported that talks were underway for an acquisition.
The deal strengthens CoreWeave’s position in the AI arms race by bringing critical infrastructure in-house.
CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said the move will eliminate $10 billion in future lease obligations and significantly enhance operating efficiency.
The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025, pending regulatory and shareholder approval.
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The deal expands CoreWeave’s access to power and real estate, giving it ownership of 1.3 gigawatts of gross capacity across Core Scientific’s U.S. data center footprint, with another gigawatt available for future growth.
Core Scientific has increasingly focused on high-performance compute workloads since emerging from bankruptcy and relisting on the Nasdaq in 2024.
Core Scientific shareholders will receive 0.1235 CoreWeave shares for each share they hold — implying a $20.40 per-share valuation and a 66% premium to Core Scientific’s closing stock price before deal talks were reported.
After closing, Core Scientific shareholders will own less than 10% of the combined company.
Two young men stand inside a shopping mall in front of a large illuminated Apple logo seen through a window in Chongqing, China, on June 4, 2025.
Cheng Xin | Getty Images
Apple on Monday appealed what it called an “unprecedented” 500 million euro ($586 million) fine issued by the European Union for violating the bloc’s Digital Markets Act.
“As our appeal will show, the EC [European Commission] is mandating how we run our store and forcing business terms which are confusing for developers and bad for users,” the company said in a statement. “We implemented this to avoid punitive daily fines and will share the facts with the Court.”
Apple recently made changes to its App Store‘s European policies that the company said would be in compliance with the DMA and would avoid the fines.
The Commission, which is the executive body of the EU, announced its fine in April, saying that Apple “breached its anti-steering obligation” under the DMA with restrictions on the App Store.
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“Due to a number of restrictions imposed by Apple, app developers cannot fully benefit from the advantages of alternative distribution channels outside the App Store,” the commission wrote. “Similarly, consumers cannot fully benefit from alternative and cheaper offers as Apple prevents app developers from directly informing consumers of such offers.”
Under the DMA, tech giants like Apple and Google are required to allow businesses to inform end-users of offers outside their platform — including those at different prices or with different conditions.
Companies like Epic Games and Spotify have complained about restrictions within the App Store that make it harder for them to communicate alternative payment methods to iOS users.
Apple typically takes a 15%-30% cut on in-app purchases.
