Three senior technical leaders from Microsoft-backed OpenAI resigned on Wednesday. Their departure marks the latest in a series of executive exits this year and coincides with a period of transition for the company that makes ChatGPT.
On Wednesday afternoon, X revealed the departures of Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, VP Research Barret Zoph, and Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew.
The artificial intelligence startup in San Francisco is arranging a new $6.5 billion fundraising round. This round would value the business at $150 billion if it changes its corporate structure.
According to Reuters on Wednesday, the company intends to restructure into a for-profit benefit corporation and will grant CEO Sam Altman an equity share. A non-profit board currently governs the for-profit company. This unique arrangement led to Altman’s dismissal from the non-profit board in November 2023 due to a breakdown in trust and communication. After five days, he was reinstated.
The business is wrapping up the investment round, which hasn’t closed yet.
It was unclear how the CEOs’ exit would impact the current fundraising effort. A “material adverse change” provision, found in some fundraising papers, allows investors to back out of a deal. This provision is triggered if the company encounters any circumstances that could significantly harm its prospects.
A person close to Murati claims that she is continuing to work at OpenAI as she negotiates her departure from the firm. She has been with ChatGPT for six and a half years. In November, she briefly served as CEO after the board temporarily removed Altman.
Murati joined OpenAI as the “VP of Applied AI and Partnerships” in December 2020, and based on her LinkedIn profile, she was promoted to CTO in May 2022. She previously worked at Tesla and the virtual and augmented reality startup Leap Motion before joining OpenAI.
As the public face of ChatGPT, Murati regularly appeared alongside Altman in his capacity as CTO. Murati led the presentation when OpenAI introduced their GPT-4o model, which can have realistic speech conversations, in May.
Murati posted on X, saying, “I’m stepping away because I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration.”
The most recent departures from OpenAI are Murati, Zoph, and McGrew. In August, co-founder of OpenAI John Schulman announced on X that he had joined competitor AI startup Anthropic. Meanwhile, co-founder Greg Brockman stated on X that he would take a leave of absence until the end of the year. Ilya Sutskever, the head scientist and third co-founder, departed OpenAI in May.
On X, Altman stated that Murati did not notify him beforehand of her decision. She told him, “there is never a good time,” explaining that she wanted to seize the opportunity while the business was doing well. A number of internal advancements were also announced by Altman in the same post: Mark Chen to senior vice president of research, Josh Achiam to head of mission alignment, and Matt Knight to chief information security officer.
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