Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, is leaving the company as part of the recent restructuring

OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati is one of several employees leaving the company, triggering a leadership change at the AI ​​startup, which is currently discussing a change in its corporate structure.

In a message he shared with employees on Wednesday, Murati said, “After careful consideration, I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI.” Bob McGrew, chief research officer, and Barret Zoph, vice president of research, also said Wednesday they were leaving the company.

This is the latest blow to the Microsoft-backed AI startup, which has seen several high-profile departures this year, including founders John Schulman and Ilya Sutskever. Schulman has moved to rival Anthropic, while Sutskever has started his own company aimed at developing “safe” AI models.

Only two of OpenAI’s 11 founders remain after Greg Brockman announced in August that he would take a leave of absence until the end of the year.

Murati, 35, has led the company’s efforts to develop ChatGPT as a standalone product, building on the technical breakthroughs made with GPT, the underlying large language model. She also oversaw the releases and improvements of the company’s image generator Dall-E and AI code generator Codex. She joined the company in 2018 after previously working at augmented reality start-up Magic Leap and electric car maker Tesla.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appointed Mark Chen as the new senior vice president of research and Josh Achiam as the new head of mission alignment. The former research scientist was promoted to ensure that “we get all the pieces (and the culture) in place to be able to successfully accomplish the mission.”

“Leadership changes are a natural part of any company, especially one that is growing so quickly and is so sophisticated,” Altman added. “I’m not going to pretend that it’s a given that this change would happen so abruptly, but we’re not a normal company.”

“Mira, Bob and Barret made these decisions independently and by mutual consent, but the timing of Mira’s decision was such that it made sense to do this all at once now so we can work together on a smooth transition to the next generation of leadership,” he added in a post on X.

Last November, Murati was named interim CEO after OpenAI’s board fired Altman for alleged lack of candor. Murati remained in the position for four days until Altman returned following intense pressure from investors and employees. He was later cleared to return to the board following an independent review of his conduct.

Murati’s departure is a reminder of the lasting scars this incident has left on the fast-growing San Francisco-based startup. The company was founded as a nonprofit dedicated to making artificial general intelligence – which aims to replicate human intelligence – benefit all of humanity. In 2019, it changed its structure and became a limited-margin company, allowing it to raise large amounts of capital from companies like Microsoft, which invested $13 billion.

The maker of ChatGPT has become one of the most valuable companies in Silicon Valley, raising more than $6 billion at a valuation of $150 billion, several people familiar with the matter said.

At the same time, the company is in talks about changing its corporate structure to be more investor-friendly and has launched new products, including new AI models such as o1, which it says has the ability to reason logically and additional language functions.

Murati wrote on Wednesday that she was leaving because she wanted to “create time and space to do my own explorations,” adding that her main focus would be to “ensure a smooth transition.”

“Even though I am no longer in the trenches with you, I will continue to keep my fingers crossed for all of you,” she wrote.

In October, a month before last year’s leadership turmoil, Sutskever and Murati were two of the senior executives who brought their concerns about Altman to the board, three people familiar with the matter said. Their concerns included Altman’s leadership style, which they said was undermining and turning people against each other, one of the informants said. Murati and others believed his actions created a toxic climate and contributed to the board’s decision to fire him and the means by which it did so, they added.

However, a day after Altman’s firing, Sutskever and Murati negotiated Altman’s return, and both stayed at OpenAI after he was reinstated as CEO. As the startup tried to recover from the instability, a dispute arose over the company’s commercialization and the pressure to develop products that could be monetized, former and current employees said.

“Overall, the company has definitely become more of a regular technology company over time, more product and profit focused and less altruistic,” said a former employee.

“The nuclear researchers are still personally loyal to Sam and are in it because they want to build (artificial general intelligence), not because they want to make money.”

In March, Murati said it was “disheartening to witness the previous board attempting to scapegoat me with anonymous and misleading claims in a last-ditch effort to save face in the media.” She told staff she had a “strong and productive relationship” with Altman and was “not shy” about giving him feedback.

Murati and Sutskever declined to comment. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Additional reporting by George Hammond