OpenAI’s chief research officer Bob McGrew and vice president of research Barrett Zoff left the company hours after OpenAI CTO Mira Murati announced her departure.
CEO Sam Altman announced the latest departures and the company’s leadership transition plans in a post on X on Wednesday night.
“Mira, Bob and Barrett each made these decisions independently and amicably,” he said, “but given the timing of Mira’s decision, it made sense to do this all at once so we could work together to ensure a smooth transition to the next generation of leadership.”
Altman said vice president of research Mark Chen has been promoted to OpenAI’s new senior vice president of research and will work with chief scientist Jakub Paczocki to lead the company’s research organization.
Former security chief Matt Knight will become OpenAI’s chief information security officer, while chief product officer Kevin Weil and vice president of engineering Srinivas Narayanan will continue to lead OpenAI’s applications team and be responsible for bringing the company’s technology to both enterprises and consumers.
Research scientist Josh Akiam will take on the new role of head of mission coordination, “working across the company to make sure all the pieces and the culture are right for the mission to be successful,” Altman said.
“Mark, Yakub, Kevin, Srinivas, Matt and Josh will report to me,” Altman added. “I’ve spent the majority of my time in the non-technical parts of the organization over the past year or so, but going forward I look forward to spending the majority of my time in the technical and product parts of the company.”
In his post, Altman sought to reassure staff, and those watching from the outside, that the leadership transition was simply part of the normal course of business.
“Leadership transitions are natural for companies, especially fast-growing, demanding ones,” he said. “I wouldn’t say it was natural that this transition was sudden, but we’re not a normal company, and I think the reasons Mira explained to me (there’s no good time, it had to be sudden or it would get leaked, and she wanted to do this at a time when OpenAI was going strong) make sense.”
McGrew simply said, “It’s time to take a break.”
“The past eight years at OpenAI have been a humbling and awe-inspiring journey,” he added in his X post. “The small non-profit I joined in January 2017 has become the most significant research and deployment enterprise in the world… I have great confidence in (OpenAI’s) leadership.”
McGrew joined OpenAI in 2017 as a member of technical staff and was promoted to vice president of research in 2018, and subsequently became chief research officer.
Zoff, who joined OpenAI in 2022, said in the post that it “felt like a natural progression to explore new opportunities outside of OpenAI.”
Zoph leads the post-training team that trains and improves OpenAI’s models before they are deployed in products like ChatGPT and OpenAI’s APIs, as well as other internal OpenAI research teams.
“This is a personal decision based on how I want to proceed with the next phase of my career,” he continued.
OpenAI’s departing executives may publicly say the split was amicable, but it comes on the heels of reports that OpenAI is planning to transition from a nonprofit-run company to a for-profit entity, with Altman set to take a 7% stake.
The disagreements over the company’s direction may have been the deciding factor, as the company reportedly valued itself at $150 billion in a new funding round. More details are expected on Thursday, when the company plans to hold an all-hands meeting.
“Leading OpenAI is all-consuming,” Altman said in the post. “On the one hand, it’s a privilege to be the fastest-growing company able to put our advanced research into the hands of hundreds of millions of people. On the other hand, it’s relentless to lead a team through those challenges, and they have gone above and beyond the call of duty for the company.”
OpenAI’s press office did not respond.
