Ronan Farrow's 18-Month Sam Altman Investigation: Board Drama, Power, and a Changed Man
Ronan Farrow — the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist behind the Harvey Weinstein exposé — has published a major profile of Sam Altman in The New Yorker, the product of 18 months of reporting. In a new interview on The Verge's Decoder podcast, Farrow discusses what he found, how Altman changed during the reporting period, and what the OpenAI board drama revealed about power, accountability, and the future of AI governance.
Eighteen Months of Access
Farrow's profile represents one of the most sustained journalistic investigations into Altman and OpenAI to date. Over 18 months, Farrow spoke with current and former OpenAI employees, board members, investors, and others close to Altman. The extended timeline allowed him to document Altman's evolution from the period of the board firing and rehiring through OpenAI's transformation into a more conventional for-profit enterprise.
How Altman Changed
According to Farrow, Altman changed meaningfully during the 18-month reporting period. The near-death experience of the board drama — when OpenAI's board briefly fired him in late 2023 before reversing course — appears to have hardened certain aspects of Altman's leadership style while also accelerating the company's shift toward enterprise priorities. Farrow describes a CEO who emerged from the crisis with a clearer sense of his own power and fewer institutional constraints on its exercise.
The Board Drama Revisited
The November 2023 board crisis remains one of the most dramatic corporate governance episodes in Silicon Valley history. Farrow's reporting adds new texture to what was actually happening behind closed doors — the concerns that led board members to act, the chaos of the reversal, and the aftermath in which Altman emerged with a reconstructed board largely stripped of the independent oversight that had existed before.
OpenAI's Enterprise Pivot
Farrow also explores OpenAI's shift from a research lab with safety at its core to an increasingly commercial entity focused on enterprise customers and revenue growth. This tension — between OpenAI's stated mission and its commercial behavior — is a thread that runs throughout the profile and connects the board drama to broader questions about whether any private company can be trusted to develop AGI responsibly.
The Bottom Line
Ronan Farrow applying his investigative lens to Sam Altman and OpenAI is significant. When the journalist who broke #MeToo turns his attention to the most powerful figure in AI, the resulting portrait carries weight. Whether or not it changes how the industry operates, it adds a crucial layer of public accountability to a story that has largely been told on OpenAI's terms.