This is one of the most insightful comments in this entire thread. Public companies never drop news during the trading day, and Microsoft surely would have been notified in advance if they planned to fire him, and had some say in the timing of the release. Whatever it is, it is so serious that Microsoft would break that coda.

Not insightful considering Microsoft is not majority owner of OpenAI.

There's reporting that Microsoft didn't even know, they were apparently informed literally one minute before the public announcement.

Microsoft is a minority owner (49%) of the capped-profit OpenAI subsidiary.

The OpenAI board has no responsibility to consider Microsoft's wants. I'd accept the argument that, their decision to not wait until after 4pm was a slight against Microsoft, for the reason you outline; but I'm not sure if urgency plays into it.

Lol, only on the internet you'd see somebody suggesting that a 49% shareholder (which happens to be Microsoft, of all people) is immaterial.

Minority owner, but largest owner, right? I think the point stands and I would assume the board consulted with MS before posting the news.

Afaik yes; largest owner in the for-profit subsidiary.

I think, the fact that it happened at 3:30 means: they didn't. Its now 7pm, and nothing new has come to light; they could have waited 31 minutes, but they didn't.

That's why I used the word "slight"; put another way, it was uncourteous for them to not wait. They probably should have. It clearly wasn't hyper-urgent (though, could still be kinda-urgent). But pointedly: they didn't need to wait, because the board has no technical, legal responsibility to Microsoft. Its extremely possible Microsoft didn't even know this was happening.

But it was late afternoon on a Friday. Could be a 20% chance that it was so time critical that it had to be immediate. Or an 80% chance that it was scheduled for a Friday afternoon.

Microsoft is the largest owner, not majority.

I wondered about the timing. Microsoft’s stock took a swan dive. I can’t imagine they're happy regardless of what they say to the press.

MSFT is up 55% YTD at all-time highs. That 1% drop at the announcement is the initial reaction which will probably disappear come Monday.

You bury bad news on Friday afternoon.

It’s only down to where it was last week. That’s not a swan dive.