When the news hit late Friday afternoon that OpenAI had forced out founder and chief executive officer Sam Altman, almost immediately the comparisons to Apple ousting Steve Jobs were making the rounds. In other words, this was a catastrophic miscalculation to unseat a tech visionary. Although history may come to see it that way as well, the passing of time might also offer another, maybe more important reflection.

As attempted coups go, what happened at OpenAI was a colossal failure. As I write this, the latest twist is that Altman and his OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman have been hired by Microsoft to lead a newly created in-house artificial intelligence division. More than 500 OpenAI employees are threatening to jump ship and join them.

Bloomberg Opinion