OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a post about Mira Murati, OpenAI's chief technology officer, leaving X: "Mira has been instrumental to OpenAI's progress and development over the past 6.5 years; she has been very instrumental in our growth from an unknown research lab to an important company.
When Mira told me this morning that she was leaving, I was sad, but of course supportive of her decision. Over the past year, she has been building a strong leadership team that will continue our progress.
I also want to tell you that Bob and Barret have decided to leave OpenAI. Mira, Bob, and Barret made these decisions independently and amicably, but the timing of Mira's decision was very appropriate, and it is now necessary for us to make these decisions at the same time so that we can work together to smoothly hand over to the next generation of leadership.
I am very grateful for the contributions of all of them.
Being the leader of OpenAI is a very exhausting thing. On the one hand, it is a privilege to build AGI, be the fastest growing company, and put our advanced research results into the hands of hundreds of millions of people. On the other hand, it is a brutal thing to lead a team through difficult times - they have exceeded the company's duties.
Mark will become our new SVP of Research, and he will now lead the research organization working with Jakub as Chief Scientist. This has been our long-term succession plan for Bob; and while it happened sooner than we thought, I couldn’t be more excited to have Mark step into this role. Mark obviously has deep technical expertise, but he has also learned how to be a leader and manager in an impressive way over the past few years.
Josh Achiam will take on a new role as Head of Mission Alignment, working company-wide to ensure all of our pieces (and culture) are in place to succeed in our mission.
Kevin and Srinivas will continue to lead the Applications team.
Matt Knight will step into the role of our Chief Information Security Officer, a position he has held for a long time. This has been our plan for a long time.
Mark, Jakub, Kevin, Srinivas, Matt, and Josh Will report to me. Over the past year or so, I've spent most of my time on the non-technical parts of the company; I now expect to spend most of my time on the technical and product parts of the company.
Leadership changes are a natural part of companies, especially ones that grow so quickly and are so demanding. I'm obviously not going to pretend that this is natural, but we're not a normal company, and I think the reasons Mira explained to me (there's no good timing, anything that's not sudden will leak, and she wanted to do this while OpenAI is on the rise) make sense. We can talk more about this tomorrow at our all-hands meeting.
Thank you for all your hard work and dedication. ”