I don’t know if this characterization is true. From all that I’ve read Ilya Sutskever was always the star and most important asset of OpenAI. Altman seemed like the SV money guy. Money should no longer continue to be as big of a problem for OpenAI, although the coup will definitely have spooked investors.
Edit: personally, I’ll add that Altman gives me major ick vibes, similar to Musk, although I can’t fully justify them. His WorldCoin scammy project convinced me that he was not the person who should be in charge of potentially in charge of advancing is towards AI.
Ilya and Denis Hassabis are more the kind of scientists with the mettle that I would trust more with the responsibility of stewarding proto AGI into existence. They both seem to understand the magnitude of what they are creating.