Meet the OpenAI employees who are so valuable they stopped a corporate coup in its tracks

• More than 700 OpenAI employees threatened to quit after the board fired CEO Sam Altman last Friday.
• The mass exodus halted a would-be mutiny and helped lead to Altman’s reinstatement. 
• Business Insider compiled a list of some of the most important employees at OpenAI, according to insiders and observers. 

As Open AI employees celebrated the return of CEO Sam Altman with a five-alarm office party, OpenAI software engineer Steven Heidel was busy publicly rebuffing overtures from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.