OpenAI leadership shakeup: 3 top execs depart, including CTO

OpenAI is not new to executive departures, as we have seen several in the past. Today, three key executives announced they are leaving the company. Mira Murati, OpenAI's Chief Technology Officer, is leaving the company. Barret Zoph, Vice President of Research (Post-Training), is leaving the company. Bob McGrew, Chief Research Officer, is also leaving the company.

According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, all three of them made these decisions independently of each other and amicably. With these recent departures, OpenAI's founding team has dwindled significantly. Out of the original 13 members who started the company, only three are still with OpenAI today.

Mira is leaving OpenAI after six and a half years. She is grateful for the opportunity to have worked with such a talented team and is proud of their accomplishments. She is stepping away to focus on her own exploration but will continue to support OpenAI from afar. OpenAI CTO Mira Murati sent the following message to her team today:

Hi all,

I have something to share with you. After much reflection, I have made the difficult decision to leave
OpenAl.

My six-and-a-half years with the OpenAI team have been an extraordinary privilege. While I'll express my gratitude to many individuals in the coming days, I want to start by thanking Sam and Greg for their trust in me to lead the technical organization and for their support throughout the years.

There's never an ideal time to step away from a place one cherishes, yet this moment feels right. Our recent releases of speech-to-speech and OpenAl o1 mark the beginning of a new era in interaction and intelligence - achievements made possible by your ingenuity and craftsmanship. We didn't merely build smarter models, we fundamentally changed how Al systems learn and reason through complex problems. We brought safety research from the theoretical realm into practical applications, creating models that are more robust, aligned, and steerable than ever before.

Our work has made cutting-edge Al research intuitive and accessible, developing technology that adapts and evolves based on everyone's input. This success is a testament to our outstanding teamwork, and it is because of your brilliance, your dedication, and your commitment that OpenAI stands at the pinnacle of Al innovation.

I'm stepping away because I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration. For now, my primary focus is doing everything in my power to ensure a smooth transition, maintaining the momentum we've built.

I will forever be grateful for the opportunity to build and work alongside this remarkable team. Together, we've pushed the boundaries of scientific understanding in our quest to improve human well-being.

While I may no longer be in the trenches with you, I will still be rooting for you all.
With deep gratitude for the friendships forged, the triumphs achieved, and most importantly, the challenges overcome together.

Mira

Sam Altman expressed deep gratitude for Mira's contributions to OpenAI, emphasizing her impact on the company, its mission, and the individuals within it. Sam Altman replied Mira with the following message:

Mira, thank you for everything. It’s hard to overstate how much Mira has meant to OpenAI, our mission, and to us all personally. I feel tremendous gratitude towards her for what she has helped us build and accomplish, but I most of all feel personal gratitude towards her for the support and love during all the hard times. I am excited for what she’ll do next. We’ll say more about the transition plans soon, but for now, I want to take a moment to just feel thanks. Sam

Barret Zoph joined OpenAI right before ChatGPT and helped build the post-training team. He believes the post-training team is in good hands and is optimistic about the future of OpenAI. Barret Zoph sent the following message regarding his departure to OpenAI employees:

I posted this note to OpenAI. Hey everybody, I have decided to leave OpenAI.

This was a very difficult decision as I have has such an incredible time at OpenAI. I got to join right before ChatGPT and helped build the post-training team from scratch with John Schulman and others. I feel so grateful to have gotten the opportunity to run the post-training team and help build and scale ChatGPT to where it is today. Right now feels like a natural point for me to explore new opportunities outside of OpenAI.

This is a personal decision based on how I want to evolve the next phase of my career. I am very grateful for all the opportunities OpenAI has given me and all the support I have gotten from OpenAI leadership such as Sam and Greg. I am in particular grateful for everything Bob has done and for being an excellent manager and colleague to me over my career at OpenAI.

The post-training team has many many talented leaders and is being left in good hands. OpenAI is doing and will continue to do incredible work and I am very optimistic about the future trajectory of the company and will be rooting everybody on.

Bob McGrew is leaving OpenAI after eight years. He is proud of the work the research team has done and feels it's time for a break. He shared the following message to OpenAI employees regarding his departure:

The last eight years of OpenAl has been a humbling and awe-inspiring journey. The small
non-profit I joined in January 2017 has become the most important research and deployment company in the world.

I have truly enjoyed working alongside an entire company full of brilliant, committed individuals there is no other place like this in the world. I'm immensely proud of the work that our research team has done over these years, from our early achievements in RL to pioneering LLMs to building the first multimodal generative models to transforming the world with ChatGPT.

It is time for me to take a break. There is no better capstone to my work here than shipping o1 to the world.

Moving forward, Mark Chen will be leading the research team as the SVP alongside Jakub as
the Chief Scientist. I will remain to support Mark, Jakub, and the team during the transition for the next two months. I have great confidence in their leadership to take OpenAl's research to AGI and beyond. I can't wait to see what this team does next.

Following the news of these key departures, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote the following note to all OpenAI employees about the leadership transition and more.

Hi All–

Mira has been instrumental to OpenAI’s progress and growth the last 6.5 years; she has been a hugely significant factor in our development from an unknown research lab to an important company.

When Mira informed me this morning that she was leaving, I was saddened but of course support her decision. For the past year, she has been building out a strong bench of leaders that will continue our progress.

I also want to share that Bob and Barret have decided to depart OpenAI. Mira, Bob, and Barret made these decisions independently of each other and amicably, but the timing of Mira’s decision was such that it made sense to now do this all at once, so that we can work together for a smooth handover to the next generation of leadership.

I am extremely grateful to all of them for their contributions.

Being a leader at OpenAI is all-consuming. On one hand it’s a privilege to build AGI and be the fastest-growing company that gets to put our advanced research in the hands of hundreds of millions of people. On the other hand it’s relentless to lead a team through it—and they have gone above and beyond the call of duty for the company.

Mark is going to be our new SVP of Research and will now lead the research org in partnership with Jakub as Chief Scientist. This has been our long-term succession plan for Bob someday; although it’s happening sooner than we thought, I couldn’t be more excited that Mark is stepping into the role. Mark obviously has deep technical expertise, but he has also learned how to be a leader and manager in a very impressive way over the past few years.

Josh Achiam is going to take on a new role as Head of Mission Alignment, working across the company to ensure that we get all pieces (and culture) right to be in a place to succeed at the mission. Kevin and Srinivas will continue to lead the Applied team.

Matt Knight will be our Chief Information Security Officer having already served in this capacity for a long time. This has been our plan for quite some time. Mark, Jakub, Kevin, Srinivas, Matt, and Josh will report to me.

I have over the past year or so spent most of my time on the non-technical parts of our organization; I am now looking forward to spending most of my time on the technical and product parts of the company.

Tonight, we’re going to gather at 575 starting at 5:30 pm. Mira, Bob, Barret, and Mark will be there. This will be about showing our appreciation and reflecting on all we’ve done together. Then tomorrow, we will all have an all-hands and can answer any questions then. A calendar invite will come soon.

Leadership changes are a natural part of companies, especially companies that grow so quickly and are so demanding. 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. We can both talk about this more tomorrow during all-hands. Thank you for all of your hard work and dedication.

Sam

While these departures mark a significant shift for OpenAI, the company remains optimistic about its future under new leadership. The transition presents an opportunity for fresh perspectives and continued innovation in the field of AI.