"In a post to X Friday evening, Mr. Brockman said that he and Mr. Altman had no warning of the board’s decision. “Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today,” he wrote. “We too are still trying to figure out exactly what happened.”
Mr. Altman was asked to join a video meeting with the board at noon on Friday and was immediately fired, according to Mr. Brockman. Mr. Brockman said that even though he was the chairman of the board, he was not part of this board meeting.
He said that the board informed him of Mr. Altman’s ouster minutes later. Around the same time, the board published a blog post."
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/technology/openai-sam-alt...
Most readers are aware they were a research and advocacy organization that became (in the sense that public benefit tax-free nonprofit groups and charitable foundations normally have no possibility of granting anyone equity ownership nor exclusive rights to their production) a corporation by creating one; but some of the board members are implied by the parent comment to be from NGO-type backgrounds.
Many NGOs run limited liability companies and for-profit businesses as part of their operations, that’s in no way unique for OpenAI. Girl Scout cookies are an example.