OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and two other research leaders are leaving the company
Three top technical leaders at Microsoft-backed OpenAI quit on Wednesday, the latest in a string of executive departures this year at a time of change for the ChatGPT maker.
Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, VP Research Barret Zoph and Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew all announced their departure via X on Wednesday afternoon.
The San Francisco-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup is negotiating a fresh funding round of $6.5 billion (approximately Rs. 54,398 crore), valuing the company at $150 billion (approximately Rs.12,55,360 crore), subject to the fact that the company is turning its corporate structure upside down. .
The company plans to restructure into a profitable business and will give CEO Sam Altman an equity stake, Reuters reported on Wednesday. Currently, a nonprofit board controls the for-profit entity, an unusual structure that led to members of the nonprofit board ousting Altman in November 2023 over a communication breakdown and loss of trust. After five days he was recovered.
The funding round has not yet been completed and the company is in the process of closing it.
It was unclear whether the executives’ departure could impact ongoing fundraising. Some fundraising documents include a “material adverse changes” clause, which allows investors to withdraw from a deal if the company encounters something that could have a significant negative impact.
According to a source close to Murati, Murati is still working at OpenAI while she negotiates her exit from the company. She has been part of the ChatGPT creator for 6.5 years and was briefly CEO in November when Altman temporarily joined the board.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Murati joined OpenAI in December 2020 as “VP of Applied AI and Partnerships” and was promoted to CTO in May 2022. Before OpenAI, she worked at virtual and augmented reality startup Leap Motion and at Tesla.
As CTO, Murati regularly appeared alongside Altman as the public face of the ChatGPT creator. When OpenAI launched its GPT-4o model in May, which enabled realistic voice conversations, Murati led the presentation.
“I am renouncing because I want to create the time and space to do my own research,” Murati wrote in a post on X.
Murati, Zoph and Mcgrew are the latest in a series of departing OpenAI executives. 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 A third co-founder, chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, left OpenAI in May.
About In the same post, Altman also announced a slew of internal promotions: Matt Knight to Chief Information Security Officer, Josh Achiam to Head of Mission Alignment, and Mark Chen to Senior Vice President of Research.
© Thomson Reuters 2024
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
