OpenAI CTO Murati and others leave company, Altman says it’s normal

Three top technical leaders of Microsoft-backed OpenAI all quit on Wednesday. Among them is chief technology officer (CTO) Mira Murati, one of the public faces of the company. Sam Altman, the CEO, says these changes are simply the normal course of business.

Mira Murati, research VP Barret Zoph, and chief research officer Bob McGrew all announced their departures via X on Wednesday afternoon. Now, of the 13 people who helped found OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT, only three remain.

As CTO, Murati frequently appeared alongside Altman as the public face of the ChatGPT maker. When OpenAI launched its GPT-4o model in May, capable of having realistic voice conversations, Murati led the presentation.

Murati, Zoph, and McGrew are the latest in a string of OpenAI executive departures. In August, OpenAI co-founder John Schulman said on X that he had joined rival AI company Anthropic, and another co-founder, Greg Brockman, also said on X he was taking a sabbatical until the end of the year. A third co-founder, chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, left OpenAI in May.

“I'm stepping away because I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration,” Murati wrote in a post on X.

“There’s never an ideal time to step away from a place one cherishes, yet this moment feels right.”

I shared the following note with the OpenAI team today. pic.twitter.com/nsZ4khI06P

undefined Mira Murati (@miramurati) September 25, 2024

Altman said on X that Murati didn’t inform him of her departure in advance. She explained that she wanted to do it when the company was in an upswing and that “there is never a good time.”

i just posted this note to openai:

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…

undefined Sam Altman (@sama) September 26, 2024

“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,” said Altman.

The timing of these departures is truly interesting, though. For instance, McGrew was speaking publically about the release of OpenAI’s o1 “reasoning” model just two weeks ago – and now he’s suddenly leaving.

Some speculate that the changes relate to Altman’s plans for OpenAI in general. The AI startup is negotiating a new $6.5 billion financing round that would value the company at $150 billion, but that’s contingent on the firm upending its corporate structure.

That’s why, according to Reuters, OpenAI plans to restructure to a for-profit benefit corporation and will give Altman a 7% equity stake.

It was disagreements over the company’s direction that led to last year’s drama when members of the non-profit board ousted Altman as CEO over a breakdown in communication and loss of trust. He was reinstated just five days later.

According to Reuters, OpenAI plans to restructure to a for-profit benefit corporation and will give Altman a 7% equity stake.

However, the funding round has not closed yet, and the departure of these executives could affect it. Reuters says that some fundraising documents contain a “material adverse change” clause, which allows investors to withdraw from a deal if the company encounters anything that could have a significant negative impact.

Some observers of the industry are more than unconvinced with what’s been going on at OpenAI.

“Wait, what? Murati is leaving, Schulman left, Karpathy left, Ilya left, Leike left, Brockman is on leave, perhaps a dozen others left, GPT-5 hasn’t dropped, Sora hasn’t shipped, the company had an operating loss of $5 billion last year, there is no obvious moat, Meta is giving away similar software for free, many lawsuits pending, and people are valuing this company at $150 billion?” said Gary Marcus, author of the book “Taming Silicon Valley.”

“Absolutely insane. Investors shouldn’t be pouring more money at higher valuations, they should be asking what is going on.”