This is really, really clearly incestuous tech media stuff as part of a pressure campaign. Sam is the darlin of tech media and he's clearly instigated this reporting because they're reporting his thoughts and not the Board's in an article that purports to know what the Board is thinking, the investors who aren't happy (the point of a non-profit is that they are allowed to make investors unhappy in pursuit of the greater mission!) have an obvious incentive to join him in this pressure campaign, and then all he needs for "journalism" is one senior employee who's willing to leave for Sam to instead say to the Verge that the Board is reconsidering. Boom, massive pressure campaign and perception of the Board flip flopping without them doing any such thing. If they had done any such thing and there was proof of that, the Verge could have quoted the thoughts of anyone on the Board, stated it had reviewed communications and verified they were genuine, etc.
1. Met with every major head of state except for Xi and Putin. He is the face of AI, not just for OpenAI, but for the entire world. The entire AI industry would hate for this to happen. 2. Lead a company from 2 billion valuation to nearly 80 billion in a year.
There is no precedent in startup history to get rid of a CEO at this stage.
He did none of the research that fuels OpenAIs ambitions and future prospects, thats mostly done by people like Sutskever, Radford and many more brilliant scientist.