The King Is Back in the Castle

If you come at the king, you best not miss.

OpenAI avoided the biggest own goal in corporate history and reinstalled Sam Altman as CEO, five days after firing him in a board-led coup. 

As coups go, this was bloodless and polite. It was also extremely fast. 

It took Steve Jobs 12 years to become CEO at Apple again after being fired in a coup. Jack Dorsey took seven years to regain the CEO position at Twitter in the same situation. In fact,  to find a coup whose success was even close to as brief as OpenAI’s, we have to look beyond business and into nation-states.

In 2002, the Venezuelan military deposed dictator Hugo Chávez and installed businessman Pedro Carmona as the president instead. Carmona got as far as changing Venezuela's official name back to the “Republic of Venezuela” from the more baroque “Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” and dissolving both the National Assembly and the Supreme Court. At this point, everyone said, “Wait, actually, we’d rather have the dictator back,” and he was removed from power, allowing Chávez to reclaim his position. Carmona now lives in exile in Colombia. Total coup time? Thirty-six hours.

In 1981, a senior private in the Kenyan Air Force, Hezekiah Ochuka, led a coup against President Daniel arap Moi. The military stormed Kenya’s national broadcast system and tried to force the Air Force to bomb the State House. Military units loyal to the former president managed to regain control of the country, and Ochuka fled. He was eventually captured and executed. Total coup time? Six hours.

So, in terms of reversing coups, Altman leaves Jobs and Dorsey in the dust and takes third place behind Venezuela’s long-time dictator, Hugo Chavez. Not bad!

Here’s the current state of play: