Anika Begay
John Schulman, one of OpenAI’s co-founders, has left the company for rival AI startup Anthropic.
Additionally, OpenAI President Greg Brockman will take an extended leave of absence after nine years at the company to “relax and recharge,” the company confirmed.
Peter Deng, a product manager who joined OpenAI last year after leading products at Meta, Uber, and Airtable, also left some time ago, the company confirmed. News of Brockman and Deng’s departures was previously reported by The Information.
A spokesperson shared this statement about Schulman: “We are grateful for John’s contributions as a founding member of the OpenAI team and his dedicated efforts to advance alignment research. His passion and hard work have created a solid foundation that will inspire and support future innovations at OpenAI and the broader industry.”
Schulman posted a blog post today about the decision on X, saying it was born out of a desire to deepen his focus on AI alignment (the science of making sure AI behaves as intended) and engage in more hands-on technical work.
“I decided to pursue this goal at Anthropic, where I believe I can gain new perspectives and do research alongside people who are deeply engaged in the topics I care about most,” Schulman said. “I am confident that OpenAI and the teams I was part of will continue to thrive without me.”
Schulman’s involvement with OpenAI began shortly after completing a PhD in electrical and computer engineering at UC Berkeley. He played a key role in building the AI chatbot platform ChatGPT, leading OpenAI’s reinforcement training organization, which optimizes generative AI models to follow human instructions.
Following the departure of AI safety researcher Jan Leike (who now also works at Anthropic), Schulman became the head of OpenAI’s science alignment efforts, also known as the “post-training” team. He was also a member of OpenAI’s newly formed safety committee; it’s unclear who might replace Schulman in that role.
Despite the controversy surrounding OpenAI, particularly regarding the company’s approach to AI safety research and its treatment, Schulman said he would not leave OpenAI over a lack of support.
“Corporate leaders have been very engaged in investing in [alignment research]”, Schulman said. “It’s a personal decision based on how I want to focus my efforts in the next phase of my career.”
With Schulman’s departure, only three of OpenAI’s original 11 founders remain: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Brockman, and Wojciech Zaremba, who is responsible for language and code generation.
“Thank you for all you’ve done for OpenAI!” Altman wrote in a post on X. “You’re a brilliant researcher, a deep thinker about products and society, and most importantly, a great friend to all of us. We’ll miss you terribly and make you proud of this place.”
Update: This story was originally published at 5:38 p.m. and has been updated to reflect OpenAI’s confirmation of Brockman and Deng’s departures.
