OpenAI considers restructuring right into a for-profit firm, CTO Mira Murati and two prime analysis managers depart the corporate
Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, during an interview at “The Circuit with Emily Chang” in San Francisco on April 4, 2023.
Philip Pacheco | Bloomberg |
OpenAI's board is considering plans to restructure the company into a for-profit entity, according to a source who asked not to be identified because talks are ongoing. The company will keep its nonprofit arm as a separate entity, the source said.
The structure would be simpler for investors and would make it easier for OpenAI employees to generate liquidity, the source added.
News of the talks comes after OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati said on Wednesday that she would be leaving the company after six and a half years.
Later in the day, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that chief research officer Bob McGrew and vice president of research Barret Zoph were also leaving the company as the highly valued AI startup continues to lose top talent.
Murati wrote in a memo to the company that she was “resigning because I want to create time and space for my own exploration.” She said her focus would be on ensuring a “smooth transition.”
“After careful consideration, I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI,” she wrote in the memo, which she also posted on social media site X. “There is never an ideal time to leave a place you value, but this moment feels right.”
Altman wrote in a late afternoon post on X that McGrew and Zoph were leaving and that their decisions were made independently.
“The timing of Mira's decision was such that it made sense to do this all at once now so that we can work together on a smooth transition to the next generation of leadership,” Altman wrote.
They are the latest high-level executives to leave OpenAI, which has grown in popularity and value since releasing chatbot ChatGPT in late 2022. OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and former head of security Jan Leike announced their departures in May. Co-founder John Schulman said last month that he would leave the company to join competitor Anthropic.
OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft, is currently seeking a funding round that would value the company at more than $150 billion, according to sources familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified because details of the round were not made public. Thrive Capital is leading the round and plans to invest $1 billion, and Tiger Global plans to join as well.
Microsoft, Nvidia and Apple are also reportedly in investment talks.
Short-term interim CEO
While OpenAI has been in hypergrowth mode since late 2022, it has also been marked by controversy and executive departures, with some current and former employees concerned that the company is growing too quickly to operate safely.
Murati became a household name when OpenAI's board abruptly fired Altman last November and named Murati interim CEO.
OpenAI's board said in a statement at the time that Altman had “not been consistently candid in his communications with the board.” The Wall Street Journal and other media reported that Sutskever had focused on ensuring AI did not harm people, while others, including Altman, were instead more eager to push for deployment of new technologies.
Nearly all of OpenAI's employees had signed an open letter declaring they were leaving the company in response to the board's decision. Days later, Altman was back at the company and Murati returned to her previous role as CTO. Board members Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley were out. Sutskever was removed from the board but remained an employee at the time.
Murati caused a stir in June when he told an audience at the Wall Street Journal's WSJ Tech Live conference that new artificial intelligence tools would likely lead to the disappearance of some creative jobs.
“Some creative jobs may disappear, but maybe they shouldn't have existed if the content that comes out of it isn't very high quality,” Murati said in an interview on stage, adding: “I really believe that using it as a tool for education [and] Creativity will expand our intelligence, creativity and imagination.”
McGrew wrote in a farewell post on Wednesday that OpenAI has “become the most important research and deployment company in the world” since he joined “the small nonprofit” in January 2017. He said he was taking a break and Mark Chen would lead the research team.
In a post on X, Zoph called it a “natural point for me to explore new opportunities outside of OpenAI,” adding that the “post-training team has a lot of talented leaders and is in good hands.”
Comments are closed.