Sacked boss of OpenAI Sam Altman looks set to return to his role after staff revolt as leaked memo says the company is 'optimistic' he could be brought back

It is being described as one of the biggest debacles in the history of Silicon Valley.

The shock firing of Sam Altman, boss of artificial intelligence pioneer OpenAI, last night looked on the verge of being reversed.

In a leaked memo to staff, the company behind AI chatbot ChatGPT said it was 'optimistic' that 38-year-old Mr Altman could be brought back, according to tech news site The Information.

One expert said there was a fear that many workers at the company would have left to join him if he set up his own AI venture. And leading investors have also been piling on the pressure to make a U-turn.

San Francisco-based OpenAI, in which Microsoft owns a large stake, has become one of the world's most talked about companies since launching ChatGPT last November.

It became the world's fastest growing software application – reaching 100 million users in two months.

Trained on mountains of data, ChatGPT can produce human-like text, from poems to software code.

Backers say the technology underpinning it could be transformational for many sectors but others think it could pose huge risks in the hands of unscrupulous operators.

In Mr Altman, Open AI had a boss described as a 'once in a generation CEO'. But the board sacked him on Friday, claiming he was 'not consistently candid in his communications'. 

It was Silicon Valley's biggest boardroom coup since Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was ousted in 1985 – before returning in 1997. Mr Altman will not, it seems, have to wait as long – he was yesterday said to be in talks to return, which may mean the board has to quit.

Dan Ives, a top analyst at US broker Wedbush Securities, described it as a 'train wreck situation'. Microsoft did not immediately comment.

• Some 53 per cent of young people in the UK have used an AI chatbot such as ChatGPT in the last year to help them with schoolwork, emails or a job, research suggests. Yet 54 per cent of the group surveyed, aged eight to 25, said they were concerned about the impact of AI on jobs in the future, according to the Digital Youth Index report