OpenAI may be winning the current artificial intelligence boom — but it’s losing top-level executives.
Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer, announced on Wednesday that she had “made the difficult decision” to leave the AI startup after six-and-a-half years.
“There’s never an ideal time to step away from a place one cherishes,” Murati said, “yet this moment feels right.” After OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman was briefly ousted in November, Murati served as interim leader of the company.
Along with Murati, OpenAI chief research officer Bob McGrew and vice president of research Barret Zoph also announced their resignations from the company.
The departures come four months after OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, resigned from the company. Sutskever, who co-led the startup’s “superalignment” team focused on AI’s existential dangers, was joined by his co-lead, Jan Leike, who also resigned in May.
“Leadership changes are a natural part of companies, especially companies that grow so quickly and are so demanding,” Altman wrote on X in response to the departures. “I obviously won’t pretend it’s natural for this one to be so abrupt, but we are not a normal company, and I think the reasons Mira explained to me (there is never a good time, anything not abrupt would have leaked, and she wanted to do this while OpenAI was in an upswing) make sense.”
Here’s a list of OpenAI executives who have left the company so far this year.
