Within days to months of the November 2023 crisis, Sam Altman did consolidate effective control over OpenAI in the way Sacks predicted.

• Employee loyalty forced the board’s hand. After Altman was fired on November 17, 2023, more than 700 of roughly 770 employees signed a letter threatening to quit and join Microsoft unless Altman was reinstated and the board resigned. This employee revolt, together with investor pressure, led directly to his return as CEO on November 22, 2023. (en.wikipedia.org) This matches Sacks’ premise that Altman had “total loyalty of the troops” and that the board had “no choice.”
• He regained and expanded his formal governance role within a few months. An internal investigation by WilmerHale—whose lawyers Altman himself helped select—concluded in March 2024 that his removal “did not mandate” firing. The new board publicly expressed “full confidence” in him, reinstated him to the board, and expanded the board with new members seen as compatible with management. (openai.com) Coverage at the time described Altman as having a “fresh mandate” and being the “unquestionable decision maker at OpenAI.” (tbsnews.net) Relative to the pre‑coup board that had just fired him, this is a clear consolidation of power.
• By 2025, he sits at the center of the controlling governance structure. In the 2025 recapitalization, OpenAI converted its for‑profit arm into OpenAI Group PBC under the control of a renamed nonprofit, the OpenAI Foundation. The Foundation holds special voting rights: it appoints all members of the PBC board and can replace them at any time. Altman is explicitly listed as a director of the OpenAI Foundation alongside other (formally independent) board members, meaning he now sits on the board of the entity that legally controls the whole group. (openai.com) That governance outcome is very close to Sacks’ claim that the nonprofit structure would, in practice, end up under Altman’s control.
• He largely achieved the structural and fundraising changes leadership sought. Despite regulatory scrutiny that forced some concessions (for example, keeping nonprofit control formally intact), OpenAI secured a massive restructuring into a public‑benefit corporation, cleared by California and Delaware attorneys general, and a new deal with Microsoft valuing OpenAI at about $500 billion and giving it far more fundraising flexibility—outcomes Altman had publicly pushed toward. (apnews.com) While not literally “getting everything he wants” in a legalistic sense, the broad direction of governance and structure has aligned with his and management’s goals rather than with those of the ousted 2023 board.

There are still constraints from regulators, Microsoft’s large stake, and critical former insiders, so Altman is not omnipotent. But Sacks’ core prediction—that, within a few months, Altman would consolidate effective control over OpenAI by leveraging overwhelming employee loyalty and end up with the governance and structural changes broadly aligned with his wishes—has clearly played out. Hence the prediction is best classified as right.