Mira Murati, the current CTO of OpenAI has decided to call it quits with the company. Last year when the Artificial Intelligence company’s board ousted its Founder Sam Altman temporarily, she took over as the interim CEO initially.
Mira Murati, OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer, stated in a written statement on Wednesday that, after considerable contemplation, she has “made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI.” She added, “I am stepping because I want to create the time and space to do my exploration.”
Two additional C-Suite executives are also set to depart, as CEO Sam Altman announced recently. The decisions by Murati, alongside OpenAI’s Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew and another research leader, Barret Zoph, were made “independently of each other and amicably,” Altman noted in a message to employees shared on social media.
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These exits mark the latest in a series of high-profile departures from San Francisco-based OpenAI, which began as a nonprofit research organisation and is renowned for developing ChatGPT. In August, its president and co-founder, Greg Brockman, revealed he would be “taking a sabbatical” until the year’s end. Another co-founder, John Schulman, departed in August for rival Anthropic, established in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI leaders.
Additionally, Ilya Sutskever, who headed a team focused on AI safety, left in May to start his own AI venture.
Shortly after Sutskever’s exit, his co-leader in the safety team, Jan Leike, also resigned, criticising OpenAI for allowing safety considerations to “take a backseat to flashy products.”
Murati expressed her appreciation for the company and Altman in a farewell message to colleagues shared on social media, characterising OpenAI as “at the pinnacle of AI innovation” and acknowledging the difficulty of leaving a place she holds dear.
Altman conveyed his gratitude for Murati’s contributions and remarked that leadership changes are a natural part of a rapidly expanding company. “I obviously won’t pretend it’s natural for this one to be so abrupt, but we are not a normal company,” Altman stated in a post on X, which also revealed that six other individuals would be assuming new roles.
Murati was unexpectedly thrust into the position of interim CEO late last year after the board of directors dismissed Altman, triggering significant upheaval in the AI sector. Subsequently, the company appointed another interim CEO before reinstating Altman and replacing most of the board members who had removed him.
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