More than 500 employees of revolutionary artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI have said they will leave if the ousted CEO Sam Altman is not reinstated and the board does not resign.

A letter from 505 of the approximately 700 OpenAI employees threatened to quit and jump ship to Microsoft, having received assurances that there are jobs for them at the tech giant.

Key members of management are signatories of the letter, including the former interim CEO Mira Murati, who was replaced this morning, and the chief scientist Ilya Sutskever.

Mr Altman was fired by the not-for-profit company’s board on Friday as they said he “was not consistently candid in his communications with the board”.

But the letter from employees expressed dissatisfaction with the board’s decision making.

“Despite many requests for specific facts for your allegations, you have never provided any evidence,” it read.

“The process through which you terminated Sam Altman and removed Greg Brockman from the board has jeopardized all of this work and undermined our mission and company.

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“Your conduct has made it clear you did not have the competence to oversee OpenAI.”

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On Monday morning, Mr Altman and company president Greg Brockman were hired by Microsoft to work on a new AI project.

OpenAI is the company behind the game-changing generative AI chatbot used by millions, ChatGPT.

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