Not necessarily. They still would have needed to have a majority of board seats on their side - I mean, Brockman was chairman of the board and he didn't find ou

Not necessarily. They still would have needed to have a majority of board seats on their side - I mean, Brockman was chairman of the board and he didn't find out about all this until the machinations were complete. Read a good a article about the history of the OpenAI board that argued this all went down due to the recent loss of 3 board members, bringing total board membership from 9 to 6 (including losses like Reid Hoffman, who never would have voted for something like this), and Altman wanted to increase board membership again. Likely the "Gang of Four" here saw this as their slim window to change the direction of OpenAI.