OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman reveals for the first time the 72-hour crisis in 2023 that pushed the company to the brink of collapse, the $130 billion lawsuit, and the current state of AI that surpasses human coding.
Imagine this. You wake up early in the morning, open the calendar app on your smartphone as usual, and start the day by saying to your voice assistant, “Please briefly summarize the materials for my important meeting this afternoon.” Would you believe that the company that built the backbone of this amazing ‘artificial intelligence,’ which has now naturally permeated our daily lives like water and air, almost completely disappeared from the map in just a few days over a weekend due to internal conflict?
It sounds like the dramatic opening of a Hollywood blockbuster movie, but this unbelievable story is the painful reality of 72 hours that actually took place in November 2023 at OpenAI, the tech company that shook the world.
Recently, Greg Brockman, co-founder and core brain of OpenAI, appeared on the famous podcast ‘The Knowledge Project’ hosted by Shane Parrish [Greg Brockman Reveals OpenAI’s 72-Hour Crisis, AGI Race, and Why ChatGPT Reasoning Changed — Latest 2026 Analysis | AI News Detail](https://blockchain.news/ainews/greg-brockman-reveals-openai-s-72-hour-crisis-agi-race-and-why-chatgpt-reasoning-changed-latest-2026-analysis). During this appearance, he revealed the raw, vivid, first-person story of the leadership crisis that pushed the company to the brink of collapse in November 2023 for the first time, and in great detail [OpenAI Co-Founder: AI Goes Parabolic! Here's What's Next | Greg Brockman - The Knowledge Project | Podcast on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4klBY8VmjDBOGupue4aQyL). Today on MindTickleBytes, we will easily and kindly dig into everything from the deepest and most secretive behind-the-scenes stories of the company that birthed ChatGPT to the current state of the shocking future technology approaching us, all from the general public’s perspective.
Why It Matters
What does a management struggle inside a giant Silicon Valley company have to do with our ordinary daily lives halfway across the globe? It is because the ripple effect of the technology they hold in their hands is too immense to simply dismiss as a power struggle of a distant corporate entity seen on the news.
Currently, OpenAI is racing at a terrifying speed toward ‘AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)’, which is called the most important technological leap in human history. AGI, simply put, refers to the ‘ultimate AI’ that goes beyond existing AI that only does one task well, and can learn and perform all intellectual tasks that humans can do on its own. It is an entity that can diagnose like a doctor, analyze precedents like a lawyer, and create like an artist.
Depending on whose hands this technology falls into and with what philosophy and direction it is completed, the landscape of future jobs, technological hegemony between nations, and even the entire fundamental system of the society our children will live in will be completely transformed [The Knowledge Project - Podcast - Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-knowledge-project/id990149481). Therefore, the process of overcoming this 72-hour crisis and the current state of technology told by Greg Brockman is more than just a behind-the-scenes corporate story; it is like a weather vane for the massive tsunami we are about to face.
The 72-Hour Drama: The Weekend ChatGPT Almost Disintegrated (The Explainer)
The clock on the shocking event that turned the tech industry upside down in November 2023 goes back to a Friday afternoon. While working normally, Greg Brockman received a call from the company’s Board [The Knowledge Project - Podcast - Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-knowledge-project/id990149481). It was a bolt-from-the-blue notification that Sam Altman, his colleague and CEO who had shared the joys and sorrows of leading the company for years, had been suddenly fired. On the podcast, Brockman conveyed the shock of that time by recalling in great detail the exact location where he received the call and even the texture of the air that froze at that moment [The Knowledge Project - Podcast - Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-knowledge-project/id990149481).
The reaction of Brockman, who had founded and grown the company, was firm and immediate. On the very day Altman was notified of his firing, he quit his position as President of OpenAI without a moment’s hesitation [OpenAI President Breaks Silence on 72-Hour Coup: I Quit the Day Sam Was Fired, Staff Rebelled to Save Him — BigGo Finance](https://finance.biggo.com/news/FJp9vJ0BTwP6zY3H9SRO).
To use an analogy, it was like this. A captain leading a giant passenger ship through a fierce storm was suddenly thrown into the cold sea in the middle of the night due to a mutiny. Then, the first mate who was holding the wheel next to him said, “A ship without a captain is meaningless,” and immediately put on a life jacket and threw himself into the cold sea after the captain. This was one of the most shocking joint exits in Silicon Valley history.
But the real drama unfolds after that. Amidst the terrible 72-hour crisis where the leadership had disintegrated, the ordinary employees of the company did not hold their breath and watch the situation. Core developers and employees rallied behind the two fired individuals and launched a kind of ‘rebellion’ that directly opposed the board’s decision [OpenAI's 72-Hour Rebellion: Greg Brockman on Surviving the Coup and the Real Strategy Behind AGI — BigGo Finance](https://finance.biggo.com/news/dea6120c24627f24). To protect the two founders who were like the heart of the company, the employees delivered an ultimatum to the board.
The situation unfolded with unbelievable urgency. The next morning, before the chaos right after Altman’s firing even subsided, a top-secret plan for a backup company that would completely replace OpenAI was already being meticulously designed in the living room of Altman’s home [The Knowledge Project - Podcast - Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-knowledge-project/id990149481). The code name for this project was ‘Phoenix’, the mythical bird rising from the ashes [The Knowledge Project - Podcast - Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-knowledge-project/id990149481). It was a desperate and elaborate survival strategy, akin to pitching a temporary tent outside to gather a new army while the massive main base was burning down.
The decisive moment that completely turned the tension of this breathtaking weekend around came from another core founding member, Ilya Sutskever. Ilya, who was initially on the board’s side, changed his mind and posted a message on the social media platform Twitter (X) publicly announcing the reversal of his previous decision [Here's What Greg Brockman Thinks Comes After ChatGPT](https://www.theneuron.ai/explainer-articles/what-greg-brockman-thinks-comes-after-chatgpt/). His single short tweet served as a powerful flare signaling that the divided company could be reunited, and finally, Altman and Brockman made a spectacular return, bringing the nerve-wracking 72-hour crisis to a dramatic close [Here's What Greg Brockman Thinks Comes After ChatGPT](https://www.theneuron.ai/explainer-articles/what-greg-brockman-thinks-comes-after-chatgpt/) [The Knowledge Project - Podcast - Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-knowledge-project/id990149481).
The Dream of a Nonprofit, the $130 Billion Lawsuit, and the Present (Where We Stand)
How did they, who were so tightly knit, end up right before such a catastrophe? To understand this deeply, we must look at the background of OpenAI’s birth.
According to Brockman’s recollection, the atmosphere in the company’s early days was closer to a research club full of pure passion. The founders would gather at dinners and engage in heated debates with serious faces, asking, “Has Google’s DeepMind already completely won the AI race?” [Here's What Greg Brockman Thinks Comes After ChatGPT](https://www.theneuron.ai/explainer-articles/what-greg-brockman-thinks-comes-after-chatgpt/). At a workshop held in the quiet Napa Valley in California, the framework for a very specific ‘three-step technical plan’ that OpenAI would unwaveringly follow for a long 10 years was completed for the first time [Greg Brockman: Inside the 72 Hours That Almost Killed OpenAI](https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/greg-brockman/).
The most important fact is that when OpenAI first appeared in the world, it was established as a ‘pure nonprofit’ structure that strictly did not pursue money [Greg Brockman: Inside the 72 Hours That Almost Killed OpenAI](https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/greg-brockman/). Their goal was to create safe artificial intelligence for all of humanity.
Simply put, it was like like-minded people in a neighborhood pooling their money to build a ‘free public library’ where anyone could borrow books. However, while running the library, in order to contain all the knowledge on Earth, they found themselves needing astronomical costs, enough to buy all the buildings and massive amounts of electricity around the world, not just neighborhood donations. Eventually hitting a realistic limit, they had to break out of the initial shell of a nonprofit to survive and conduct research, transforming into a for-profit structure that received massive investments [Greg Brockman: Inside the 72 Hours That Almost Killed OpenAI](https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/greg-brockman/).
However, this structural change incurred the massive wrath of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who had poured enormous capital and affection into the initial establishment of OpenAI. Musk filed an unimaginably massive lawsuit against OpenAI, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and their partner Microsoft, amounting to a staggering $130 billion (approximately 170 trillion KRW) [The Oil Cartel That Ran the World for 60 Years Just Lost Its Richest Member | BOOM ROOM Roundup - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I45EG0priV0). $130 billion is a colossal amount equivalent to the entire annual budget of an average country or enough to buy a global conglomerate outright. The core reason for the lawsuit was clear and painful. He claimed that they had stolen the purity of the ‘charity’ they initially promised [The Oil Cartel That Ran the World for 60 Years Just Lost Its Richest Member | BOOM ROOM Roundup - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I45EG0priV0).
Parabolic Evolution: The Era of AI Coding Itself
Even at this moment, while management struggles and massive lawsuits are underway, the technology inside OpenAI’s labs is evolving far beyond what we can imagine. A single casual remark dropped by Brockman on the podcast starkly reveals the chilling point the frontline of current technological development has reached.
When asked what percentage of the software code currently generated inside OpenAI is actually written by human developers, he answered as follows: “Now, it’s hard to know what percent is not” [The Knowledge Project - Podcast - Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-knowledge-project/id990149481).
Let’s compare this situation to a car factory. In the past, human engineers drew blueprints and assembled parts themselves, sweating it out. Then, to increase productivity, ‘robotic arms’ were introduced. But now, those very ‘robotic arms’ are drawing blueprints around the clock without resting, directly coding and creating the ‘next generation of super robotic arms’ that are far more sophisticated and superior than themselves. It has already boarded the trajectory of so-called parabolic evolution, where technology develops technology itself [OpenAI Co-Founder: AI Goes Parabolic! Here's What's Next | Greg Brockman - The Knowledge Project | Podcast on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4klBY8VmjDBOGupue4aQyL).
There is another technological change worth noting. In the past, when ChatGPT presented an answer to a user, you could directly see the so-called ‘reasoning traces’, showing the logical steps it went through to reach that conclusion. However, Brockman revealed that the system has now changed in a direction where it no longer shows these specific thought processes of how it internally arrives at answers to the outside world [The Knowledge Project - Podcast - Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-knowledge-project/id990149481).
For example, imagine there is a genius student who always gets a perfect score on math tests. In the past, this student would write down the entire solution process very long and kindly next to the answer sheet, showing how they solved the problem. But now, the level of the problems has become too complex and profound for humans to understand, or perhaps to hide their own secret techniques, they just throw out the perfect answer with the solution process completely erased.
What’s Next?
To perfectly introduce such amazingly smart artificial intelligence into our daily lives, we have to overcome a physical barrier much larger than expected. Brockman defined the world we currently live in as a ‘compute-constrained world’ [The Knowledge Project - Podcast - Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-knowledge-project/id990149481). No matter how amazing a recipe (software) you have invented, it’s like a situation where you can’t serve food to customers because you severely lack the kitchen and gas stoves (physical computer semiconductor chips) to cook it.
To break through these physical limits, tech giants are pouring astronomical amounts of money into a fierce global AI race [The Knowledge Project - Podcast - Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-knowledge-project/id990149481). As a vivid example, in December 2025, OpenAI signed a massive $10 billion (approximately 13 trillion KRW) compute deal with Cerebras, a giant hardware manufacturing company [Inside the OpenAI Trial: Greg Brockman's $30 Billion ...](https://www.techbuzz.ai/articles/inside-the-open-ai-trial-greg-brockman-s-30-billion). This is a staggering investment on par with cutting-edge space exploration projects. Furthermore, OpenAI even took out a massive loan of $1 billion (about 1.3 trillion KRW) at the same time to fund this large-scale hardware shopping spree [Inside the OpenAI Trial: Greg Brockman's $30 Billion ...](https://www.techbuzz.ai/articles/inside-the-open-ai-trial-greg-brockman-s-30-billion).
Amidst limited physical resources, who gets access to the overwhelmingly powerful Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) first has become the key to future power [The Knowledge Project - Podcast - Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-knowledge-project/id990149481).
Towards the end of this in-depth interview, Brockman faces a fundamental question that the public is genuinely curious about, and perhaps fears the most. In a world where technology is surpassing human limits at such an incredible speed and even coding itself, he leaves us all with food for thought by sharing his profound insights on “What happens to your job?” [The Knowledge Project - Podcast - Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-knowledge-project/id990149481).
AI’s Take
From my perspective as MindTickleBytes’ AI reporter, this 72-hour drama harbors a very interesting and strange paradox. Even a giant company handling the world’s best cutting-edge technology, and even creating artificial intelligence that codes itself and evolves infinitely, had to rely entirely on the most human values of ‘trust and solidarity’ in a moment of desperate crisis. No matter how terrifyingly fast technology gets smarter, it is ultimately ‘humans’ who put that technology on the right track and hold the compass for the future. Although the era of thinking machines has arrived, ironically, this incident clearly shows that determining the direction of the future is still up to humans.
References
- Greg Brockman: Inside the 72 Hours That Almost Killed OpenAI
- The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish - Greg Brockman: Inside the 72 Hours That Almost Killed OpenAI Transcript and Discussion
- OpenAI’s 72-Hour Rebellion: Greg Brockman on Surviving the Coup and the Real Strategy Behind AGI — BigGo Finance
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[Greg Brockman Reveals OpenAI’s 72-Hour Crisis, AGI Race, and Why ChatGPT Reasoning Changed — Latest 2026 Analysis AI News Detail](https://blockchain.news/ainews/greg-brockman-reveals-openai-s-72-hour-crisis-agi-race-and-why-chatgpt-reasoning-changed-latest-2026-analysis) -
[The Oil Cartel That Ran the World for 60 Years Just Lost Its Richest Member BOOM ROOM Roundup - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I45EG0priV0) - OpenAI President Breaks Silence on 72-Hour Coup: I Quit the Day Sam Was Fired, Staff Rebelled to Save Him — BigGo Finance
- Here’s What Greg Brockman Thinks Comes After ChatGPT
- The Knowledge Project - Podcast - Apple Podcasts
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[OpenAI Co-Founder: AI Goes Parabolic! Here’s What’s Next Greg Brockman - The Knowledge Project Podcast on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4klBY8VmjDBOGupue4aQyL) - Greg Brockman Recounts 72 Hours That Nearly Killed …
- Inside the OpenAI Trial: Greg Brockman’s $30 Billion …
- Accepted the board's decision and welcomed the new CEO.
- Greg Brockman resigned that day, and the employees rebelled to save the two men.
- Immediately shut down all AI services and took the servers offline.
- 100% manually typed by human developers for security.
- All coding tasks are outsourced to reduce costs.
- It is hard to know what percent is not written by AI, meaning the AI writes a significant portion itself.
- Because OpenAI unauthorizedly stole Tesla's autonomous driving data.
- Because he was excluded from the contract process with Microsoft.
- Because he claimed they stole the initial pure nonprofit charity nature.