“I’m stepping down because I want to create time and space for my own exploration,” CTO Murati said on his X account on Saturday. “I’m going to work towards a smooth transition of work.”
The Murati CTO did not comment on the reason for the resignation or any plans thereafter.
The Albanian native joined OpenAI in 2018 and played a key role in launching major products such as ChatGPT and image-generating model DALL-E, which led to the global AI craze.
In May, he also demonstrated himself when ChatGPT’s voice model “GPT-4o” was released.
When CEO Sam Altman was ousted by the board of directors in November last year, he served as interim CEO and supported Altman’s return.
Bloomberg quoted sources as saying that OpenAI employees were shocked by the news of Murati’s departure.
“I’m very grateful for the achievements he’s made,” CEO Altman said of Murati’s resignation announcement. “I can’t stress enough how much he meant to OpenAI, to our mission, to all of us.”
Recently, senior OpenAI figures, including Murati and co-founders, have been leaving the company one after another.
Murati’s announcement of his departure came 50 days after OpenAI co-founder John Schulman left the company last month.
Schulman, who led the AI model post-learning research team at OpenAI, left OpenAI, saying, “I want to focus more deeply on AI alignment research and return to practical technical work to open a new chapter in my career.”
Schulman moved to open-AI rival Anthropic.
Greg Brockman, one of the co-founders, also took a long-term leave until the end of the year, citing “recharge.”
Earlier in May, co-founder Ilya Suzukeber, then-senior scientist, left OpenAI to establish a new artificial intelligence (AI) startup, and co-founder Andrei Karpati, who left OpenAI and rejoined early last year, also quit OpenAI in February.
Only two co-founders, CEO Sam Altman and Wojciech Zaremba, will remain among the co-founders who created OpenAI in 2015, Bloomberg said.
Murita’s resignation comes as OpenAI has recently attracted a large $6.5 billion investment to develop AI technology.
OpenAI has been controlled by its non-profit board of directors, which reportedly calls for investors to expand shareholder rights.
Reuters reported that the board is no longer in control of OpenAI’s main business and is working on a restructuring plan to shift to a for-profit model that could benefit investors.
EJ SONG
US ASIA JOURNAL
