“I have something to share with you. After much reflection, I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI.” With a message posted on social media, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati has said goodbye to the company that revolutionized generative artificial intelligence with its ChatGPT. She is not the only one. Shortly after, OpenAI’s director of research, Bob McGrew, has joined the flight, saying that it was “time to take a break,” and a vice president of research, Barret Zoph, who has tweeted that he is “exploring new opportunities outside of OpenAI.” Their departures come in the midst of a funding round, which calls for OpenAI to become a conventional for-profit commercial company.
Murati briefly served as OpenAI’s chief executive after the board fired Sam Altman, the firm’s co-founder and CEO, who was later reinstated as full CEO. Murati’s tenure as interim CEO was short-lived, as she rebelled against Altman’s firing. She was the first in a list of employees to sign a letter calling for the directors to resign and threatening to leave if power was not returned to the former CEO.
In her farewell message, the board said: “I am stepping away because I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration. For now, my main focus is to do everything in my power to ensure a smooth transition and maintain the momentum we have built.”
I replied with this. Look, thank you for everything.
It’s hard to overstate how much Mira has meant to OpenAI, our mission, and to us all personally.
I feel tremendous gratitude towards her for what she has helped us build and accomplish, but I most of all feel personal…
— Sam Altman (@sama) September 25, 2024
The company has struggled to regain its footing since last year’s crisis. Its president and co-founder, Greg Brockman, said in August that he was taking a sabbatical until the end of the year. Another co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, who led a team focused on AI security and was one of the protagonists of the maneuver that ended with Altman’s temporary dismissal, left in May and founded his own artificial intelligence firm. Days after Sutskever left, his co-leader of the security team, Jan Leike, also resigned and criticized OpenAI for letting security “take a backseat to brilliant products.”
OpenAI is now controlled by the board of a nonprofit organization, a foundation of sorts, that Altman and his co-founders created in late 2015 to work for the good of humanity in the quest for so-called human-like artificial general intelligence. The company created a for-profit subsidiary in 2019 to help fund the high costs of developing AI models, and has since attracted billions in outside investment from Microsoft and other investors while successfully launching and marketing its products.
According to various American media, plans for an ongoing financing round involve removing the obstacles that the company was subject to with this governance structure, so that it is more attractive to investors, even at the cost of giving greater importance to profitability at the expense of other security considerations.
The transition is still being discussed and no timetable has been set, a source told Bloomberg. In a statement, a spokesperson said OpenAI remains “focused on building AI that benefits everyone,” adding: “The nonprofit is core to our mission and will continue to exist.” According to Reuters, which first reported the plans, the nonprofit OpenAI will continue to exist and hold a minority stake in the for-profit company.
The departure of Murati and the other executives comes at a time when OpenAI’s valuation is soaring. The company is finalising a round of financing that would value it at $150 billion (around 136 billion euros), according to Bloomberg two weeks ago, warning that negotiations are underway and the conditions could change. In the operation, the firm headed by Sam Altman hopes to raise around $6.5 billion to finance its development.
According to Bloomberg, as part of the restructuring to make OpenAI a company, there are discussions about handing over a 7% stake to Altman, valued at more than $10 billion at that price. Altman has named six employees who will report directly to him, some in new roles, including Matt Knight as chief information security officer. “Over the last year I’ve spent most of my time on the non-technical parts of our organization; now I’m looking forward to spending most of my time on the technical and product parts of the company,” Altman wrote on the social network X, He added that a meeting would be held on Thursday to answer questions from employees. “Leadership changes are a natural part of companies, especially those that grow so quickly and are so demanding. Obviously, I’m not going to pretend that it’s natural for this to be so abrupt, but we’re not a normal company,” he added.
Murati leaves with good words. “My six and a half years with the OpenAl team have been an extraordinary privilege. While I will express my gratitude to many people in the coming days, I want to start by thanking Sam and Greg for their confidence in me to lead the technical organization and their support over the years,” he says. “There is never an ideal time to step away from a place you hold dear, but this is the right time,” he adds.
“I will always be grateful for the opportunity to be part of and work alongside this extraordinary team. Together we have pushed the boundaries of scientific knowledge in our quest to improve human well-being. Even though I am no longer in the trenches with you, I will continue to support you. With deep gratitude for the friendships forged, the triumphs achieved, and most importantly, the challenges overcome together,” concludes his message.
With a valuation of $150 billion, OpenAI has established itself as one of the most valuable private startups in the world, behind only ByteDance (the publisher of TikTok), which is worth more than $250 billion, and SpaceX, the rocket and satellite company founded by Elon Musk, valued at around $200 billion. Since companies are not listed, these are references that come from theoretical valuations or prices set in financing rounds and share sales, but there is no market that reflects fluctuations in their value based on the economic situation, the results of the companies and other factors.
