Honda is recalling 303,700 2023 and 2024 Accords and HR-Vs because of a defect that could stop some front seat belts in the vehicles from tightening properly in a crash.

The automaker is recalling Accords built between Oct. 4, 2022, and Oct. 14, 2023, as well as HR-Vs made between April 26, 2022, and Oct. 14, 2023, it said in a filing last week with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. All of the vehicles being recalled are gas-powered, rather than hybrids.

Honda said the front seat belt pretensioners in a fraction of those vehicles were assembled without a rivet that secures the quick connector and wire plate. It said the installation of that rivet was skipped during assembly but did not explain why or how.

Without that rivet, the seat belt will not tighten to properly restrain occupants and get their bodies into a safe position in the event of a crash, making harm more likely.

The company estimated that 1% of the vehicles being recalled are defective. It said it has had seven warranty claims related to the problem and no reports of injuries or deaths.

Honda said in a statement that the owners of all affected vehicles will be contacted by mail and told to take their vehicles to authorized Honda dealers, who will replace the defective part. Customers who have already had those repairs done at their own expense may be eligible for refunds.

The company said in its filing that it received its first complaint about the problem May 23. On Sept. 20, it received the affected parts and began to investigate, and on Nov. 16 it identified a defect that necessitated the recall.

The late crush of holiday travelers is picking up steam, with about 2.7 million people expected to board flights on Wednesday and millions more planning to drive to Thanksgiving celebrations.

Airline officials say they are confident that they can avoid the kind of massive disruptions that have marred past holiday seasons, such as the meltdown at Southwest Airlines over last Christmas.

Airlines have added tens of thousands of employees in the last couple years, and Southwest says it has bought more winter equipment to keep planes moving even during sub-freezing temperatures.

Security lines at airports could be long because of the crowds. Delta Air Lines is telling passengers to arrive at the airport at least two hours before their flight if they are traveling within the United States, three hours early if they’re flying overseas — and maybe earlier on Sunday and Monday.

The holiday will also test the Federal Aviation Administration, which faces shortages of air traffic controllers at key facilities that caused reductions in flights to the New York City area this summer and fall.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said during a news conference Monday that the government has prepared for holiday travel by hiring more air traffic controllers, opening new air routes along the East Coast and providing grants to airports for snowplows and deicing equipment.

Nearly three-fourths of flight delays are caused by weather, according to the FAA. The agency’s figures indicate that the rate of canceled flights is down this year from last year, when airlines didn’t have enough staff to handle the strong recovery in travel after the pandemic.

The Transportation Security Administration predicts that it will screen 2.7 million passengers Wednesday and a record 2.9 million on Sunday, the biggest day for return trips. That would narrowly beat TSA’s all-time mark set on June 30.

“We are ready for the holidays. We’re confident we have enough agents,” TSA Administrator David Pekoske said Tuesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

He urged travelers to give themself extra time to get through busy airports and be considerate of TSA agents, gate agents and flight crews and others who are giving up their holidays.

“I just ask passengers to thank people for what they’re doing. They’re making sure the system is safe and secure. That’s a tall order,” he said.

AAA predicts that 55.4 million people will travel at least 50 miles from home between Wednesday and Sunday, the third-highest forecast ever by the auto club. AAA says most of them — 49.1 million — will drive.

Drivers will get a break from last year on gasoline prices. AAA says the nationwide average for gas was down to $3.29 a gallon on Tuesday, compared with $3.66 a year ago.

Air travelers will enjoy lower prices too. Airfares in October were down 13% from last year, according to government figures, and fares around Thanksgiving have been about 14% lower than a year ago, according to the travel site Hopper.

Even so, the high cost of rent, food, health care and other expenses were weighing on people’s travel plans.

Jason McQueary, a 25-year-old social worker and graduate student said rent and other essentials eat up most of his paycheck and he was grateful for his credit card points, which brought down the cost of his roundtrip flight from Denver to Chicago from $450 to $150.

“I was just like, ‘man, I’m glad I only come home once a year,’” said McQueary, who was waiting to get picked up Tuesday after arriving to Chicago O’Hare International Airport to spend Thanksgiving with family in his hometown of Byron, Illinois.

Qualyn Margain consulted with their children and decided to skip Thanksgiving this year.

Margain, a life insurance agent and barista based in Seattle, told NBC News the savings from skipping a Thanksgiving feast will let their family more comfortably celebrate Christmas along with the childrens’ birthdays, which also fall over the end-of-year holidays.

Challenges like rising rents and higher food prices made marking every holiday impractical this year. There will also be slightly fewer toys and more essentials this season, they added.

“Everything is just too expensive, and you have to work twice as hard to survive in a less enjoyable way,” Margain said. “We’re just going to have a normal, relaxing day, and that way we are going to have the ability to do Christmas.”

Margain is just one of many shoppers who are trying hard to make their dollars go further this season. There are some indications the holiday shopping period got off to a slow start ahead of Black Friday on Nov. 24.

Consumer spending is responsible for about 70% of all economic activity in the U.S., and consumers have continued to spend at a surprising pace despite the upheaval of the Covid-19 pandemic.

But now, shoppers are getting squeezed by multiple factors at once. Rents continue to rise and housing prices are near record highs. The steep rise in interest rates over the last two years has pushed credit card rates much higher, and that has helped drive up credit card debt as well.

The pandemic-era student loan pause has finally ended, and the expanded child tax credit is long gone.

Most people have spent their Covid-era savings and stimulus cash as well, although people who have higher incomes have held on to more of those funds.

Just as important are changes in people’s spending habits. Ted Rossman, who covers credit and retail spending and consumer finance trends for Bankrate, said people are still shopping, but they’re less interested in traditional holiday gifts than they were in the past.

The effect is that holiday-season spending has just kept pace with inflation over the last couple of years, even as retailers have launched big promotions in October instead of waiting for Black Friday. Rossman says that’s likely to be the case again — and while retailers might find that disappointing, it’s far from a disaster for the economy.

“When we’re talking about physical retail, clothing, toys, a lot of the holiday favorites, a lot of those sales have been lackluster over the last year,” he said.

That has to do with the famous adage that millennials prefer to spend on experiences, like travel or concerts, instead of material goods. This hasn’t hurt overall consumer spending, but spending has shifted away from the holiday period.

The National Retail Federation, a trade group of retailers, says sales will rise 3% to 4% in November and December, to a total of around $960 billion.

The financial pressures on consumers have also caused credit card delinquency rates to rise over the last few years. In the third quarter, almost 3% of cards had late payments, according to the Federal Reserve. That’s the highest rate since 2012.

Lindsey Tallent told NBC News that she’s scaling back her holiday shopping after she unexpectedly lost her warehouse job this month. She said she’s picking up work when she can and looking for a new job, but she’s still had to make some difficult calls.

“I was planning a bunch of things. A lot of nieces and nephews I was hoping to buy for that I wasn’t able to buy for last year,” said Tallent, who lives in Washington state. “I’m going to buy gifts for my child who is still at home out of the two, and probably not friends or family beyond that.”

Similar strains have more people using buy now, pay later loans to make major purchases. Buy now, pay later, or BNPL, programs are short-term, zero-interest installment loans that allow customers to get items immediately and pay for them over time.

Adobe Analytics estimates consumers made $4.9 billion in purchases on those loans between Nov. 1 and Nov. 20.

According to a 2021 survey by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the five leading firms in that business originated 180 million loans in 2021, an increase of 900% from 2019.

While retailers and shoppers have both found something to like in those loans, they still come with risks. Eden Iscil, public policy manager for the National Consumers League, a consumer advocacy group, said that the BNPL industry is new and regulated far less stringently than the credit card industry.

While banks and credit cards have to be strict about how much they let people borrow, Iscil said BNPL programs are less stringent and users are sometimes allowed to borrow more than they can afford. They can also be tripped up by items like unusual repayment periods, resulting in additional fees and damage to their credit scores.

“It’ll be concerning if we see consumers go beyond their means to pay for extra holiday shopping,” Iscil said.

Rossman agrees that it’s a bad time to overspend, as credit card interest rates are at all-time highs thanks to repeated interest rate hikes. Bankrate data shows the average interest rate on a card is now above 20%.

“People are being more thoughtful about their spending and being worried about the state of the economy,” he said.

There’s good news buried in there as well, Rossman says: Because inflation has come down and supply chains and inventory management have improved, shoppers will be able to find better deals in 2023 than they have in the last few years.

Qualyn Margain said they are looking for positives this season as well. While they’re not having friends over for Thanksgiving, they said they’ve seen a lot of people coming together via food and clothing swaps or mutual aid groups in response to the struggles of the season.

“I think it’s really beautiful how many people are coming together to support each other,” they said. “It’s really cool that the human spirit is so resistant.”

CORRECTION (Nov. 24, 2023, 5:43 p.m. ET) A previous version of this article misstated Qualyn Margain’s last name. It is Margain, not Morgan.

Popeyes is expanding its menu beyond chicken sandwiches — and it’s a permanent change this time.

The fast-food chain announced Wednesday it’s adding five chicken wing flavors to its menu nationwide, with three debuting at Popeyes for the first time, beginning Wednesday. The flavors include Honey BBQ, Roasted Garlic Parmesan, Signature Hot, Ghost Pepper and Sweet ’N Spicy.

“At Popeyes, we like to challenge the status quo and are consistently redefining what’s expected from fast food brands,” said Sami Siddiqui, president of Popeyes North America, in a statement. “We know our guests want even more bold Louisiana-inspired wing flavors to choose from and are excited to see our new wings line-up take flight.”

Siddiqui added that the Ghost Pepper wings were an “overnight success” when tested at locations earlier this year, and the Sweet ’N Spicy wings have been the chain’s best-performing product since its chicken sandwich.

Popeyes said it has been working on perfecting the wings recipes for three years. The new wings will be available starting at $5.99 for a six-piece.

Last month, Popeyes overtook KFC to secure its spot as the No. 2 chicken chain in the U.S., behind Chick-fil-A.

Sean “Diddy” Combs, who settled rape and abuse allegations with the singer Cassie last week, faces growing scrutiny in the midst of his push to refresh and expand a business portfolio he spent decades cultivating.

In a letter filed with a New York court Friday before the settlement, the London-based spirit maker Diageo cited the accusations to bolster its monthslong effort to prevent Combs from serving as the face of DeLeón tequila, which he has run in a joint venture with it for a decade.

The letter came after a series of lawsuits Combs filed against Diageo, whose other brands include Johnnie Walker, Don Julio and Smirnoff.

In May, he accused the company of pigeonholing DeLeón and Cîroc, the vodka he fronted for 15 years, as “Black brands” for “urban” consumers, allegedly violating an equal treatment provision in their contract. In a subsequent October complaint, Combs said Diageo had blackballed him from the spirit industry over his racial discrimination claims, which have been put on ice until next spring. He alleged in last month’s retaliation suit that the company was sending him the message “speak up and you will be punished.”

Diageo ended the Cîroc partnership over the summer, saying at the time that Combs had breached his contract. But the parties are still feuding over the use of up to $15 million in advertising and promotional budgeting, some of it for DeLeón’s marketing next year.

Combs attended a party in 2019 featuring Cîroc, the vodka line he fronted for 15 years.Kevin Mazur / Getty Images for Sean Combs

In recent months, Diageo has argued in court documents that Combs’ accusations of racism, which it denies, have already made him an ineffective spokesperson. The new “public and disturbing accusations” against him risk “devastating and permanent damage” to the tequila brand, the company said Friday, adding that one influencer had already asked to cut ties with DeLeón on moral grounds.

In its court letter, Diageo pointed to a statement by Combs’ lawyer to The New York Times indicating he was aware that Cassie wanted to expose details of their relationship for at least six months before they emerged publicly. That period, the company said, “happens to correspond with the pendency of Combs Wines’ original lawsuit against Diageo.”

Diageo declined to comment beyond the statements in the court documents.

A spokesperson for Combs didn’t comment on the Diageo dispute but said the decision to settle with Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, “does not in any way undermine his flat-out denial of the claims. He is happy they got to a mutual settlement and wishes Ms. Ventura the best.”

In the days since the rape accusations emerged, scrutiny of Combs and members of his business circle has intensified. On Wednesday, his music label, Bad Boy Records, was sued along with its parent company and former president, Harve Pierre, accusing Pierre of sexually assaulting an unnamed assistant at the label.

“The allegations are from many years ago that were never brought to the attention of the company,” a Bad Boy Entertainment spokesperson said. “Neither the plaintiff nor the executive are current employees of the company. We are now investigating the allegations, and our top priority is the safety and well-being of our employees.”

Pierre didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

On Monday, a co-host of a podcast on Combs’ Revolt media network announced she wouldn’t participate in a third season.

“I am a [sexual assault] survivor & I cannot be part of a show that’s supposed to uplift black women while @Diddy leads the company,” Dawn Montgomery, who hosts “Monuments to Me,” a podcast about Black women’s issues and successes, posted on X.

Montgomery told NBC News that she empathized with Cassie’s allegations. “I cannot sign back on and say that I want to be paid to do a podcast where a few of the episodes were probably going to reflect this conversation,” she said. “Diddy and his people could never do anything towards me to make me feel like I needed to continue to be quiet.”

Revolt didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Old interviews with Combs’ associates addressing his alleged behavior and new comments critical of him have circulated on social media. Some users included the phrase “Surviving Diddy,” an apparent reference to the Lifetime docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly,” which featured accounts of women who accused the R&B artist of abuse over several decades. Kelly is serving time in prison for multiple sex crimes convictions.

At a performance in Los Angeles last weekend, the singer Kesha dropped lyrics referring to Combs in her 2009 hit single “Tik Tok,” whose opening line mentions him.

A 2016 fragrance photo shoot for Sean John, the popular streetwear label Combs launched in 1998.Penske Media via Getty Images

The pushback follows a flurry of business moves by Combs, 54, over the last 12 months.

He announced in September that he was returning publishing rights to some Bad Boy artists, telling Variety he was “doing the right thing” by making good on plans in the works since 2021. Several artists criticized the offer, saying they’d been asking for the rights for years but were unlikely to earn much from music that was more profitable decades ago.

In February, he rebranded his Combs Enterprises as Combs Global to reflect his evolution “as a business leader and a bigger vision to build the largest portfolio of leading Black-owned brands in the world.” The venture includes Empower Global, an e-commerce marketplace launched in 2021 aimed at supporting Black entrepreneurs.

The refresh came three months after Combs agreed to acquire a pair of cannabis operations in a deal valued at up to $185 million at the time, but the plan fell through in July after the merger that would have spun them off collapsed. In May, Combs rolled out a new R&B label, Love Records, as part of a deal with Motown Records, under which he released his fifth studio album in September.

Combs, whose net worth has been estimated at $1 billion, shot to fame in the early 1990s as a music promoter-turned-talent director before he set out to run his own label, with Bad Boy Records representing artists from the late Notorious B.I.G. to Faith Evans. One of his earliest major ventures outside music was in fashion, with the Sean John streetwear label, which launched in 1998. Combs sold the bulk of the brand in 2016 for an estimated $70 million, then bought it back from its bankrupt owner for around $7.5 million five years later.

A Macy’s spokesperson said the retailer began phasing out Sean John starting this fall in a move unrelated to the allegations against Combs. Other major sellers of the line, including Nordstrom and Saks Off 5th, didn’t respond to requests for comment; neither did Sean John’s parent company.

Some crisis communications experts said Combs’ quick settlement of the abuse claims could blunt further damage to his brand and businesses.

“Diddy avoided much of that pain by getting this thing resolved quickly,” said Evan Nierman, CEO of the public relations firm Red Banyan. “I think resolving the legal matter and having it completely closed to their mutual satisfaction is going to help inoculate him against seeing his career permanently destroyed.”

He said he wasn’t surprised that other celebrities and major brands largely haven’t weighed in. “I expect people to remain quiet on the topic now while it’s in the headlines,” he said, adding, “This is not going to have a lasting damaging effect on him.”

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Monday ordered Toyota’s credit arm to pay $60 million for tricking customers into unnecessary products that it then made unreasonably hard to cancel.

The agency said thousands of borrowers complained that Toyota Motor Credit employees had added extra products to their loans, racking up fees for the company at consumers’ expense. It then made it unreasonably hard for consumers to cancel those services.

Toyota Motor Credit is based in Plano, Texas, and it provides financing for people buying cars through Toyota dealerships.

The company admitted no wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

The CFPB said the company will pay $32 million to consumers who did not receive refunds they were owed; $9.9 million to consumers who tried to cancel their policies but were unable to do so; $6 million to consumers who were harmed by false information sent to a consumer reporting company; and $52,000 for those who were given inaccurate refunds. Toyota’s finance arm will also pay a $12 million penalty to the agency’s victim relief fund.

In one example, the CFPB said Toyota Motor Credit told customers that if they wanted to cancel extra products bundled into their car loans, they should call a hotline that had been set up to frustrate them. Employees who answered the phone were told to continue promoting the products until the customer asked them to cancel three times. At that point, the employee was supposed to say that the only way to cancel was to file a written request.

More than 118,000 customers called that hotline from 2016 to 2021 alone.

In addition to paying the fines and restitution, the agency said Toyota Motor Credit will also be required to make it easy for consumers to cancel unwanted coverage, inform consumers that they can cancel the products online or in writing, and monitor dealers to make sure they don’t add products to customer loans without the borrower’s consent. The company will also be prohibited from tying employee compensation or performance metrics to consumer retention of bundled products such as the ones at issue in the case.

The agency said the unnecessary products included Guaranteed Asset Protection, a type of insurance that covers the difference between the amount a consumer owes on their auto loan and what their insurance pays if the vehicle is stolen, damaged or totaled; Credit Life and Accidental Health coverage, which covers the remaining balance on the loan if the borrower dies or becomes disabled; and vehicle service agreements, which reimburse borrowers for parts and service beyond what is covered by the manufacturer’s warranty.

The CFPB said those products averaged $700 to $2,500 per loan.

The agency also said the company knowingly gave false information to ratings agencies, hurting their customers’ credit scores by telling the reporting companies the consumers were missing their payments when they had actually returned the vehicles they had leased.

Cruise CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt has resigned from his role at the autonomous vehicle venture owned by General Motors, according to a company statement sent to CNBC on Sunday.

Mo Elshenawy, who previously served as executive vice president of engineering at Cruise, will now serve as president and CTO for Cruise, the company said. 

Vogt confirmed his resignation Sunday night in a social media post on X, formerly known as Twitter. He did not give a reason for the resignation, and said he plans “to spend time with my family and explore some new ideas.”

The departing CEO also offered words of encouragement, writing: “Cruise is still just getting started, and I believe it has a great future ahead. The folks at Cruise are brilliant, driven, and resilient. They’re executing on a solid, multi-year roadmap and an exciting product vision. I’m thrilled to see what Cruise has in store next!”

Vogt’s resignation follows a string of missteps by Cruise.

As CNBC previously reported, the company issued a voluntary recall affecting 950 of its robotaxis, and suspended all vehicle operations on public roads following a series of incidents that sparked criticism from first responders, labor activists and local elected officials, especially in San Francisco. 

In one serious incident in October, the human driver of another vehicle struck a pedestrian in San Francisco at night, tossing her into the path of a Cruise self-driving car, which then drove over and dragged her.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise’s deployment and testing permits for its autonomous vehicles after that incident. “When there is an unreasonable risk to public safety, the DMV can immediately suspend or revoke permits,” the regulators said in a statement at the time.

In orders of suspension the California DMV issued to Cruise, the regulators accused the company of failing to give a transparent account of what happened during the pedestrian collision.

Separately, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating Cruise to determine whether its automated driving systems “exercised appropriate caution around pedestrians in the roadway,” according to a filing on the agency’s website.

GM purchased Cruise in 2016. It then brought on investors such as Honda Motor, Softbank Vision Fund and, more recently, Walmart and Microsoft. However, last year, GM acquired SoftBank’s equity ownership stake for $2.1 billion.

GM execs, including CEO and Chair Mary Barra, had hoped the startup would be ramping up a driverless transportation network this year, and hoped Cruise would play a notable role in doubling the company’s revenue by 2030.

In October 2021, GM said it expected “new businesses” such as Cruise and its BrightDrop commercial EV business to grow from $2 billion to $80 billion during that timeframe.

According to its most recent quarterly update, GM has lost roughly $1.9 billion on Cruise between January and September 2023, including $732 million in the third quarter alone.

Barra also serves as chair of the Cruise board of directors. Former Tesla and Lyft executive Jon McNeill, a member of GM’s board of directors since 2022, was appointed vice chairman of the self-driving unit’s board following Vogt’s resignation.

Alex Roy from transportation consultancy Johnson & Roy told CNBC, “Responsibility starts at the top. If Cruise is going to survive, and they have great technology there, the CEO had to go.”

“I suspect at least one more high level exec will have to resign — anyone who made the call to obfuscate or omit information in communication with the California DMV,” he said. “In my opinion, Cruise has been too slow in taking steps to rebuild trust with staff, regulators and the public. Executive departures are table stakes.”

Vogt’s resignation comes roughly two years after he was reappointed as CEO, following an unexpected departure by Dan Ammann, a former GM executive, in December 2021.

Ammann, a former investment banker, began leading Cruise in 2019 after serving as GM’s president and chief financial officer before that. He was credited with the 2016 acquisition of Cruise.

The United Auto Workers announced Monday that employees at each of the Big Three U.S. automakers officially ratified new contracts.

It had been clear for several days that the contract would win approval. The union said 64% of employees at Ford, Stellantis and General Motors voted to accept the deals, which were won after a six-week strike.

The new contract will give union workers an immediate pay increase of 11%, and union members will get a total pay increase of 25% over the course of the 4½-year deal. The new contracts also reinstate cost-of-living adjustments, let workers reach top wages in three years instead of eight, and protect their right to strike over plant closures.

The contracts were negotiated after members of the UAW went on strike from Sept. 15 until late October, in its first simultaneous strike against Ford, GM and Stellantis, which owns Chrysler and other brands.

According to the UAW’s ratification trackers, 70.0% of employees at Stellantis and 69.3% at Ford voted for the new contracts. The vote was far closer at GM, where just 54.7% of voting members approved. The trackers show that 102,679 workers voted out of about 146,000 UAW members employed by the Big Three.

The new contracts are set to expire April 30, 2028. With ratification almost complete, the union is beginning to turn its sights toward Tesla and Toyota, whose U.S. workers aren’t unionized.

Max, the streaming service previously known as HBO Max, is lowering the price of its ad-supported product over the next week as it tries to win more subscribers to its low-priced, commercial-driven services.

From this Monday to next Monday, Nov. 27, new and returning Max subscribers will be able to sign up to the streaming service with ads for $2.99 a month as part of the Black Friday deal. The promotion will last for six months.

A subscription to Max with ads typically costs $9.99 per month.

Max ad-free plans cost $15.99 and $19.99 per month.

HBO is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, which was formed by the $43 billion combination of WarnerMedia and Discovery in April 2022. The company changed the name of HBO Max to Max this May.

Earlier this month, Netflix said it had 15 million subscribers to its lower-priced plans with advertising.

Streaming services have been raising prices this year and also putting more emphasis on plans that include ads, as their lower prices are enticing to consumers while the advertising revenue the companies get helps to make up for the lower cost.

The future of OpenAI appeared in limbo Monday, with hundreds of company employees signing a letter calling on the board to step down after it was unable to reach an agreement to bring back ousted CEO Sam Altman.

Altman, whose departure from OpenAI was announced Friday, joined Microsoft early Monday after a weekend of boardroom drama that sent shock waves across Silicon Valley. Altman will lead a new artificial intelligence project at Microsoft, the tech giant said early Monday after rumors swirled that he could make a dramatic return to the company he helped build into one of the world’s hottest startups.

Hours later, a letter, which was first reported by Wired and journalist Kara Swisher and later shared with NBC News, said OpenAI employees would resign and possibly join Microsoft ‘unless all current board members resign, and the board appoints two new lead independent directors, such as Bret Taylor and Will Hurd, and reinstates Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.’

An OpenAI spokesperson said the letter had been shown to the board.

‘Your actions have made it obvious that you are incapable of overseeing OpenAI,’ the letter reads. ‘We are unable to work for or with people that lack competence, judgement and care for our mission and employees. We, the undersigned, may choose to resign from OpenAI and join the newly announced Microsoft subsidiary run by Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.’

As of late Monday morning, more than 700 names appeared on the letter, though NBC News has not confirmed all had chosen to sign it. Many of them had published identical posts on X reading, ‘OpenAI is nothing without its people.”

OpenAI has about 770 employees, the spokesperson said.

Ilya Sutskever, a board member and co-founder of OpenAI whose name also appeared on the letter, posted to X that he regretted his role in Altman’s exit.

He appeared to imply there were ongoing efforts to bring Altman back.

“I love everything we’ve built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company,” he wrote.

Altman quoted the post, adding three hearts.

Emmett Shear, a co-founder and former CEO of the video streaming platform Twitch, confirmed that he would be the new interim CEO of OpenAI.

OpenAI, founded in 2015 with money from several tech billionaires, has emerged in recent years as the leader of a new wave of AI technology best known by the chatbot app ChatGPT. That app rocketed to popularity almost exactly a year ago, demonstrating the huge strides AI has made and making OpenAI the hottest tech startup on the planet.

Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella announced the Altman hire on X just before 3 a.m. ET, more than 48 hours after OpenAI’s board of directors said it “no longer had confidence” in Altman — a leading figure in the tech industry’s efforts to grapple with the promise and potential dangers of AI.

Microsoft is a major financial backer of OpenAI, and it has invested billions since its first funding deal in 2019. Since then, OpenAI has become the most visible of a new generation of AI companies — its ChatGPT, a large language model chatbot, is widely used and has become a symbol of everyday AI innovation.

Nadella said Microsoft was still committed to supporting OpenAI, which now has a new leadership team, while confirming that Altman will lead a ‘new advanced AI research team,’ alongside Brockman, an OpenAI co-founder who was pushed off the company’s board and later quit as its president Friday.

‘We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success,’ Nadella said.

Altman reshared the post, adding: ‘The mission continues.’

OpenAI said it cut ties with him after a review found he was ‘not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.’

Brockman said Friday in a post to X that he and Altman were ‘shocked and saddened’ by the board’s decision but added that there are ‘greater things coming soon.’

CNBC reported Sunday that some OpenAI investors were pushing for Altman to be brought back after Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati was named interim CEO.

But Shear confirmed on X early Monday that he would instead be leading OpenAI.

He laid out a plan for his first 30 days, including hiring an independent investigator ‘to dig into the entire process leading up to this point and generate a full report.’

Shear said that ‘OpenAI’s stability and success are too important to allow turmoil to disrupt them like this,’ adding that ‘I have nothing but respect for what Sam and the entire OpenAI team have built.’