I think the situation is changing every five minutes. Sam going to Microsoft is surely an offer that exists, but it may or may not actually happen.
They had that last week. If Sam returns to OpenAI, they will continue to have it. If Sam brings most of the OpenAI team to MS, there will be an awkward recreation of IP and MS will likely get it again [0]. But other than being the one to bring the team along, I’m not sure what Sam, personally, would bring.
(Sam at OpenAI is a different story obviously.)
[0] OpenAI has some maybe-dubious IP in the form of a massive dataset. MS may prefer not to possess such a thing. And I don’t know whether MS is permitted under its contract to create derivative works of whatever it licensed from OpenAI.
Sam Altman replacing Satya Nadella as CEO of Microsoft would certainly be a twist!
Sam Altman was never a consideration as CEO of the whole company.
But instead CEO or VP of a seperate entity similar to how Github operates for which Sam would be more than suitable. And once again Sam just built a $100b business. That requires a bit more skill than people give him credit for.
Building a $100bn business is one thing. Running a division of a big company is rather different.