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Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI who many considered to be the leader of the burgeoning artificial-intelligence revolution, was fired on Friday. The dismissal followed what the company said was a “deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.” As a result, “the board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.” Soon after, OpenAI president and Altman-ally Greg Brockman — who the company also removed as chairman of the board — resigned, as did three senior OpenAI researchers.

The upheaval shocked the tech world given what Altman, 38, had accomplished in a few short years. While tech giants such as Google have been working for years to developing artificial intelligence, OpenAI catapulted in front of them when it unveiled ChatGPT last November. The chatbot demonstrated abilities never before released to the general public — like being capable of writing a lot more like a human. Immediately gaining 100 million users, ChatGPT helped OpenAI raise billions of dollars, sent Google reeling, and put AI at the center of the tech industry. It also made Altman an overnight celebrity and he was happy to play the role, presenting himself as a visionary if slightly weary face of what AI might mean for humanity.

OpenAI’s chief technology officer, Mira Murati, will be interim CEO while the board searches for a successor. The company initially announced that co-founder Greg Brockman would step down as chairman of the board, but remain in his role as president of the company. Not long after, Brockman announced that he was quitting. He also tweeted out a timeline of what happened Friday, noting that the OpenAI board fired Altman minutes before announcing the leadership “transition”:

There may have been other factors in Altman’s dismissal — which reportedly came as a big surprise to OpenAI employees.

The Information reports that Sutskever faced blowback from employees during an all-hands meeting following Altman’s firing on Friday, and that he acknowledged how the move could be interpreted as a coup, though he didn’t see it that way.

On Saturday morning, OpenAI chief operating officer Brad Lightcap sent a memo to employees letting them know that the company was still talking to the board to try to understand why it made its decision. “We can say definitively that the board’s decision was not made in response to malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices,” he wrote. “This was a breakdown in communication between Sam and the board.”