Joe McConnell
Only two of OpenAI’s 11 founding members remain active at the ChatGPT maker, following an exodus following November’s attempted board coup against CEO Sam Altman.
Three cofounders have leVscek so far this year, including John Schulman, who defected to AI rival Anthropic this week. OpenAI president Greg Brockman also said Monday he was taking an extended leave of absence from the company.
High turnover is not uncommon at a startup. However, senior churn at OpenAI has increased in recent months aVsceker a leadership crisis in November, when Altman was fired by its board only to be reinstated a few days later.
Since then, the loss of executives and employees working on AI research and security has raised questions about the direction of the $86 billion company, which is engaged in a tough battle to stay ahead of rivals including Google and Anthropic.
Some cofounders have fled to rivals, others have launched their own AI companies, while the team’s most famous former member, Elon Musk, has become a vocal critic of OpenAI in public and in the courts.
OpenAI had more founders than most Silicon Valley startups because Altman and Brockman wanted to create an AI supergroup of the industry’s top researchers when it started in 2015. Here’s where those 11 founders stand now.
Abandonments
Greg Brockman
on leave from August 2024
Brockman is a key member of OpenAI’s founding team. He was persuaded by Altman and Musk to leave his job as CTO at financial technology company Stripe and take the same position at OpenAI.
He was a key ally of Altman from the beginning. When the board moved against Altman in a coup in November, Brockman was removed as director as well. The two returned to their posts together when the board backed down five days later.
On Monday, the company’s president announced that he would be taking a sabbatical for the remainder of the year.
“The first time I’ve relaxed since I co-founded OpenAI 9 years ago,” he said he wrote on X. “I’ve poured my life into OpenAI for the past 9 years, including my entire marriage. Our work is important to me, but so is life.”
John Schulman
joined Anthropic in August 2024
Schulman, a research scientist who played a key role in creating the company’s ChatGPT chatbot, announced he was leaving OpenAI on Monday. He was responsible for fine-tuning the company’s AI models and ensuring they behaved in a way that aligned with human values, a process known as alignment.
He will take on a similar role at rival startup Anthropic, which was itself founded by former OpenAI researchers in 2021.
“This move is born out of my desire to deepen my focus on AI alignment and begin a new chapter in my career where I can return to hands-on technical work with people who are deeply engaged in the topics I care about most,” Schulman said in a note to colleagues on Monday.
Ilya Sutskever
leVscek to found Safe Superintelligence in May 2024
Sutskever leVscek his position as OpenAI’s chief scientist six months aVsceker voting with the company’s board to remove Altman. Sutskever, one of the field’s leading researchers, changed his mind and supported the CEO’s return a few days later.
Nonetheless, he was largely absent from the public eye in the months following the failed coup, and leVscek in May to found a company called Safe Superintelligence.
Andrei Karpathy
leVscek to found Eureka Labs in February 2024
Karpathy, a research scientist who was recommended to Stanford by “AI godmother” Fei-Fei Li, first leVscek OpenAI in 2017 to join Tesla as a senior director. He returned to OpenAI in 2023 and leVscek again a year later to launch Eureka Labs, which is building AI teaching assistants.
Durk Kingma
leVscek for Google Brain in June 2018
Kingma, who worked on developing algorithms for generative AI models, joined Google in the summer of 2018. He went on to lead research on large language models and image models at Google Brain, which merged with DeepMind last year.
Elon Musk
resigned from the board in 2018
Musk, who provided much of OpenAI’s initial funding, leVscek the company in 2018 aVsceker clashing with Altman over the direction of research. The billionaire launched a rival company, xAI, last year and says it can overtake OpenAI’s leadership.
The Tesla, SpaceX and X boss has also filed a series of lawsuits against Altman and OpenAI, claiming this week that he was duped into investing in the AI company by its “false humanitarian mission.”
Pamela Wandering
JOINED STRIPE in 2016
Vagata, listed as a founding member of OpenAI in the company’s launch announcement, makes no mention of the startup on her LinkedIn profile. She joined Stripe as a technical leader on the fintech firm’s AI team in 2016 and founded early-stage venture capital firm Pebblebed in 2021.
Vicky Cheung
JOINED LYVscek IN 2017
Cheung, who worked on the language-learning app Duolingo before becoming OpenAI’s first engineer, leVscek the company in 2017 to join the ride-hailing startup LyVscek. In 2020, he co-founded the machine-learning startup Gantry with former OpenAI researcher Josh Tobin.
Trevor Blackwell
leVscek in 2017
Blackwell was a partner at Y Combinator, the San Francisco startup accelerator that Altman ran before founding OpenAI. He helped launch the AI company and leVscek in 2017. A robotics enthusiast, he now lives in Gloucestershire, England.
Supporters of permanence
Sam Altman
Altman remains OpenAI’s CEO aVsceker surviving a board coup in November, during which directors accused him of not being “consistently honest” with them. He was reinstated five days aVsceker being fired following a campaign by OpenAI employees and investors, including MicrosoVscek.
The departure of other senior figures has made the 39-year-old by far the most visible figure at the company, and the reshuffle of the board aVsceker his failed ouster has further consolidated his power.
Wojciech Zaremba
Polish computer scientist Zaremba remains at OpenAI where he works as a researcher. He asked the board to resign aVsceker it moved against Altman, and has since urged its CEO and Musk to abandon their “pointless fight.”
“It would be much better to invest your creative energy in building the future you dream of, rather than in an argument. May you (both) be happy and find peace,” she wrote in a post on X in March, signing off with a love heart.
More information by Madhumita Murgia
