Mira Murati, the chief technology officer at OpenAI, the influential artificial intelligence start-up, said on Wednesday that she would leave the company after working there for more than six years.
In a memo she sent to employees and later shared on X, Ms. Murati said she was stepping away to “create the time and space to do my own exploration,” though she did not elaborate on what those next steps would be. “For now, my primary focus is doing everything in my power to ensure a smooth transition, maintaining the momentum we’ve built,” she said.
Hours later, OpenAI’s chief research officer, Bob McGrew, and a vice president of research, Barret Zoph, announced their plans to leave as well. Mr. Zoph said in a post on X that he was “exploring new opportunities,” while Mr. McGrew did not post publicly.
They are exiting OpenAI as the chief executive, Sam Altman, and others are working to transform it into a traditional for-profit company, according to two people familiar with the talks. That is not expected to happen until next year.
Ms. Murati and the other executives are the latest in a string of high-profile departures in a turbulent year for the company, which included the surprise ouster and reinstatement five days later of Mr. Altman, who is also a co-founder of OpenAI.
Ms. Murati was appointed to lead the company during the power struggle, before rejecting the role just two days later. She has remained one of the public faces of the start-up, making frequent public appearances to discuss its technology.
A spokeswoman for OpenAI declined to comment beyond what the executives posted online. Mr. McGrew did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a reply to Ms. Murati on X, Mr. Altman thanked her for her years at the company and said he would provide more information on the leadership transition in the coming days.
“It’s hard to overstate how much Mira has meant to OpenAI, our mission, and to us all personally,” he wrote.
Late Wednesday, Mr. Altman said on social media that the departures of Mr. McGrew and Mr. Zoph were unrelated to the resignation of Ms. Murati but 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.”
The turmoil at OpenAI has been closely watched by investors and competitors. The start-up is in talks with Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple and others for a new round of investment that could value the company at as much as $150 billion, a huge leap from its last round at $80 billion.
Over the past nine months, OpenAI has more than doubled in size, with over 1,700 employees. It is controlled by the board of a nonprofit organization that was created in late 2015 by Mr. Altman and his co-founders to oversee the start-up’s technologies.
(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems.)
In recent months, the company has added a number of seasoned executives, including new heads of product, a new chief financial officer and a head of global policy to handle relationships in Washington and across the world. The company has also stressed its focus on making its technology safe for widespread use.
But as new executives have come in, a number of longtime OpenAI managers and researchers have headed out the door. Of the 13 people who helped found OpenAI in 2015 with a mission to create artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I. — a machine that can do anything the human brain can do — only three remain.
One of the remaining founders, Greg Brockman, the company’s president, has taken a leave of absence through the end of the year, citing the need for time off after nearly a decade of work.
The two executives who announced their departures in the wake of Ms. Murati’s resignation were among those who formed the core of OpenAI’s research team over the past several months. The company has also added key researchers during this time, most notably Noam Brown, a former Meta researcher who specializes in the “reasoning” techniques that help drive OpenAI’s latest technology, called OpenAI o1.
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