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OpenAI will no longer be a not-for-profit and chief executive Sam Altman will receive equity in the company.
Chief technology officer and interim CEO during Sam Altman’s brief ousting last year, Mira Murati announced yesterday (25 September) that she is leaving OpenAI.
“After much reflection, I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI,” Murati wrote in a statement posted to X.
“I’m stepping away because I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration.”
Murati’s decision to leave seems to have some as a surprise, even to Altman, who wrote on X: “When Mira informed me this morning that she was leaving, I was saddened but of course support her decision.”
Along with Murati’s departure, research VP Barret Zoph and chief research officer Bob McGrew also announced they are leaving the company.
However, Altman was quick to clarify that the resignations come independent of each other.
As replacements, Mark Chen, a research vice-president is being promoted to senior VP of research, with Jakub Pachocki as chief scientist. Josh Achiam, a research scientist at OpenAI is set to become its head of mission alignment, while Matt Knight will continue as the company’s chief information security officer.
Yesterday’s exodus was not the first of its kind at OpenAI.
Earlier this year, OpenAI co-founder John Schulman and former executive Jan Leike announced their departures to join Anthropic, a rival AI company.
Leike spoke out against the company shortly after resigning, claiming he disagreed with OpenAI’s leadership about the company’s core priorities “for some time” and that these issues had reached a “breaking point”.
Co-founder Ilya Sutskever resigned from the company to start his own safety-focused AI company.
Andrej Karpathy, another co-founder of OpenAI, left the company in February to work on founding an AI education start-up.
Meanwhile, co-founder Greg Brockman went on sabbatical earlier this year.
OpenAI to become a for-profit company
Yesterday, Reuters exclusively reported that OpenAI will be restructuring its business from a non-profit into a for-profit corporation. While OpenAI non-profit will continue to exist as an entity, owning a minority stake, its board will no longer control the company.
Chief executive Sam Altman will also receive equity in OpenAI for the first time, set to be valued at close to $150bn after its restructuring. Additionally, the cap on returns for investors is also set to be removed.
However, sources from within the company said that the details and a timeline for the restructuring are yet to be finalised with lawyers and shareholders.
“We remain focused on building AI that benefits everyone, and we’re working with our board to ensure that we’re best positioned to succeed in our mission. The non-profit is core to our mission and will continue to exist,” a spokesperson told Reuters.
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