OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati is leaving the company.
And within hours, two more OpenAI executives joined a list of high-profile departures, marking another upheaval for the major AI company.
After six and a half years at the company, which included a stint as CEO after co-founder Sam Altman was fired, Murati said in a message to employees on Wednesday that he had made the “difficult decision to leave the company.”
Read the full note to staff, which she shared online, below.
Hello everyone. I have something to share with you all. After much consideration, I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAl. My six and a half years with the OpenAl team have been a privilege for me. I will thank many people over the next few days, but first I want to thank Sam and Greg for their trust and support over the years in leading our technical organization. There is no ideal time to leave a place that is dear to me, but I feel that now is the time. Our recent release of speech synthesis and OpenAl o1 marks the beginning of a new era in interaction and intelligence. This is an achievement made possible by your ingenuity and craftsmanship. We have not only created smarter models, but we have fundamentally changed how AI systems learn and reason about complex problems. We have brought safety research from the theoretical realm to real-world applications, creating models that are more robust, tuned, and steerable than ever before. Our work has made cutting-edge AI research intuitive and accessible, and developed technology that adapts and evolves based on everyone’s input. This success is a testament to our great teamwork, and your talent, dedication, and commitment have put OpenAl at the pinnacle of AI innovation. I am stepping away because I want to create time and space to pursue my own explorations. For now, my main focus is to ensure a smooth transition and do everything I can to maintain the momentum we have built. I am forever grateful for the opportunity to build and work with this incredible team. Together, we have pushed the boundaries of scientific understanding in our quest to improve human well-being. Although I am no longer fighting alongside you, I will continue to cheer you on. I am deeply grateful for the friendships we have made, the victories we have achieved, and above all, the challenges we have overcome together. Mira
Altman wrote to X that he had thanked Murati in a message to the company.
“Words cannot express how much Mira has meant to OpenAI, to our mission, and to all of us,” Altman wrote. “I am immensely grateful for all she has helped us build and achieve, but most of all, I am personally grateful for the support and love she has shown us during some difficult times. I can’t wait to see what she does next.”
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Murati, originally from Albania, joined OpenAI in 2018 after working at Tesla, where he led the development teams behind the company’s flagship products ChatGPT and image generation tool Dall-E.
In addition to leading these key teams, Murati also served as the public face of the company, appearing in OpenAI videos and giving interviews to journalists.
When Altman was abruptly fired by the company’s board in 2023, The New York Times reported that Murati played a key role in raising concerns about his leadership style to the board and to Altman directly.
At the time, Ms. Murati’s lawyers countered that she had not lobbied the board to fire Mr. Altman and was surprised by the decision.
A few hours later, news broke that two senior research executives were also leaving.
Barrett Zoff, the company’s vice president of research, announced he would be stepping down from his position at X.
“Hey everyone, I’ve decided to leave OpenAI,” Zoph wrote in a memo to OpenAI staff. “This was an incredibly difficult decision as I’ve had a great time at OpenAI. I joined just before ChatGPT and helped build the post-training team from the ground up alongside John Schulman and others. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to run the post-training team and help build and scale ChatGPT to the level it is today.”
Shortly after, Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew also issued a statement announcing his departure and praising the company’s latest o1 AI model.
“It’s time for a break,” he wrote. “What better culmination of my work here than to launch the O1 into the world?”
In a message shared with X, Altman thanked the pair and said Josh Akiam would “assume his new role as chief mission coordination officer, working across the company to ensure all the pieces (and culture) are in place for mission success.”
Altman also announced that Matt Knight would become chief information security officer, a role that he said had been “in the works for some time.”
Executives resign one after another
The exodus from OpenAI began when co-founder Ilya Sutskever left the company in May, after expressing concerns about Altman before resigning.
Hours after Sutskever’s departure, Jan Reicke, co-lead of OpenAI’s Superalignment Group, announced his resignation.
OpenAI lost more executives in August when President Greg Brockman announced he was taking an extended leave of absence, at the same time that VP of consumer products Peter Deng left the company and co-founder John Shulman moved to rival AI company Anthropic.
Daniel Kokotajiro, a former researcher at the company, also said that OpenAI’s safety team was nearly halved in about a year.
The company is seeking funding from Thrive Capital, Microsoft, Apple and others at a staggering valuation of $150 billion.
Earlier this month, the company unveiled “o1,” an AI model designed to “reason” like humans and tackle complex problems in science, coding, and mathematics.
The administration also announced changes to its Safety and Security Committee that did not include Altman.
