I bet Sam goes and founds a company to take on OpenAI…and wins.
If the company's 'Chief Scientist' is this unhappy about the direction the CEO is taking the company, maybe there's something to it.
This looks like a terrible decision, but I suppose we must wait and see.
It's for-profit (capped-profit) subsidiary exists solely to be able to enable competitive compensation to its researchers to ensure they don't have to worry about the opportunity costs of working at a non-profit.
They have a mutually beneficial relationship with a deep-pocketed partner who can perpetually fund their research in exchange for exclusive rights to commercialize any ground-breaking technology they develop and choose to allow to be commercialized.
Aggressive commercialization is at odds with their raison d'être and they have no need for it to fund their research. For as long as they continue to push forward the state of the art in AI and build ground-breaking technology they can let Microsoft worry about commercialization and product development.
If a CEO is not just distracting but actively hampering an organisation's ability to fulfill its mission then their dismissal is entirely warranted.