OpenAI keeps losing executives. Here's everyone who left so far this year

On November 6, 2023, in San Francisco, OpenAI's Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati and CEO Sam Altman were present at OpenAI DevDay. Photo credit: Barbara Ortutay (AP)

OpenAI may be leading the charge in the current AI surge, but it's experiencing a departure of high-ranking executives.

Mira Murati, the chief technology officer at OpenAI, revealed on Wednesday that she has decided to leave the AI company after a six-and-a-half-year tenure.

“There's never a perfect moment to leave a beloved place,” Murati remarked, “but this feels like the right time.” Following a brief period when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was removed from his position in November, Murati took on the role of interim leader for the company.

In addition to Murati, Bob McGrew, the chief research officer at OpenAI, and Barret Zoph, the vice president of research, also shared their decisions to leave the company.

The recent exits occurred four months after Ilya Sutskever, an OpenAI co-founder and the former chief scientist, stepped down from his role. Sutskever, who was instrumental in leading the company's "superalignment" team that aimed to address the potential existential risks of AI, left alongside Jan Leike, his co-lead, who also resigned in May.

Altman shared on X in response to the recent departures that changes in leadership are a normal occurrence in businesses, particularly in fast-growing and high-pressure environments. "While I won't say that the suddenness of this situation is typical, we're not an ordinary company. I understand the reasons Mira gave me—there's never a perfect moment for such changes, anything less sudden would have likely been exposed, and she wanted to make this move while OpenAI was thriving."

Below is a compilation of OpenAI leaders who have departed from the organization this year.

Mira Murati Image Source: JP Yim (Getty Images)

In her announcement regarding her departure from OpenAI, Murati expressed a desire to "make room in my life for personal exploration."

Murati expressed her gratitude to Altman and OpenAI's president, Greg Brockman, for believing in her to head the technical team and for their ongoing support over the years. She also highlighted the company's recent developments, including the ability to convert speech to speech, as well as the latest series of models, OpenAI o1. According to the company, this new model can tackle more intricate tasks and challenges in fields like science, programming, and mathematics than its previous versions.

In March, Murati informed The Wall Street Journal that OpenAI's upcoming text-to-video creator, Sora, is expected to launch to the public sometime this year. However, she expressed uncertainty about whether Sora would permit nudity in its content, raising concerns among experts who advocate for regulations on similar AI technologies before they are released on a broader scale.

OpenAI insignia Photo: The Yomiuri Shimbun (AP)

Shortly after Murati's announcement, McGrew revealed that he too would be departing from the startup after spending eight years there.

"I'm incredibly proud of what our research team has accomplished over the years. From our initial successes in reinforcement learning to leading the way in large language models, creating the first multimodal generative models, and making a global impact with ChatGPT," McGrew said in a statement.

McGrew mentioned that he was stepping back for a while, but he would still offer his assistance to Mark Chen, the new head of OpenAI's research team, and the entire team over the next two months.

Altman mentioned on X (META) that Chen stepping into McGrew's role has always been part of their long-term plan for Bob's eventual succession, although it's occurring earlier than anticipated.

OpenAI emblem Image: Peter Morgan, File (Associated Press)

Zoph, who became part of OpenAI just before the release of ChatGPT, shared that his choice to depart was a tough one. However, he emphasized that it was a personal decision and indicated that it felt like the right time for him to seek out new opportunities beyond OpenAI.

The recently departed vice president of post-training research expressed his appreciation to McGrew and acknowledged the backing he received from Altman and Brockman while working at the startup.

Ilya Sutskever Image Credit: JACK GUEZ / AFP (Getty Images)

Sutskever revealed his resignation from OpenAI in May, nearly six months after he was involved in an attempt to remove Altman from his role as leader.

After spending nearly ten years at the company he helped establish alongside Altman and others, Sutskever expressed his belief that OpenAI will develop artificial general intelligence that is both secure and advantageous under the guidance of its current leadership.

Sutskever was a co-leader of OpenAI's "superalignment" team, which focused on studying the potential life-threatening risks posed by AI. His fellow leader, Jan Leike, stepped down not long after Sutskever did. Following their departures, OpenAI decided to dissolve the "superalignment" team.

Currently, Sutskever is one of the founders of a new AI company named Safe Superintelligence (SSI), while Leike works as a machine learning researcher at Anthropic, a competitor to OpenAI.

Andrej Karpathy Photo by Michael Macor/San Francisco Chronicle (AP)

Karpathy departed from OpenAI for the second time in February, having returned the previous February. The prominent AI researcher and co-founder of the organization stated in his announcement of resignation that there was no specific incident or problem that prompted his decision, emphasizing that "nothing 'happened'" to cause it.

Prior to returning to OpenAI, Karpathy worked as the AI director at Tesla (TSLA) from 2017 until 2022. He is currently in the process of creating Eureka Labs, which describes itself as “a new type of educational institution that is built around artificial intelligence.”