Mira Murati and Bob Mcgrew leaves ChatGPT maker OpenAI

Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer, and Bob Mcgrew, Chief Research Officer at OpenAI have announced leaving after working for years for the ChatGPT maker.

Mira Murati’s message on this decision:

“Hi all, I have something to share with you. After much reflection, I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAl.

My six-and-a-half years with the OpenAl team have been an extraordinary privilege. While I’ll express my gratitude to many individuals in the coming days, I want to start by thanking Sam and Greg for their trust in me to lead the technical organization and for their support throughout the years. There’s never an ideal time to step away from a place one cherishes, yet this moment feels right. Our recent releases of speech-to-speech and OpenAl o1 mark the beginning of a new era in interaction and intelligence – achievements made possible by your ingenuity and craftsmanship. We didn’t merely build smarter models, we fundamentally changed how Al systems learn and reason through complex problems. We brought safety research from the theoretical realm into practical applications, creating models that are more robust, aligned, and steerable than ever before. Our work has made cutting-edge Al research intuitive and accessible, developing technology that adapts and evolves based on everyone’s input. This success is a testament to our outstanding teamwork, and it is because of your brilliance, your dedication, and your commitment that OpenAl stands at the pinnacle of Al innovation.

I’m stepping away because I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration. For now, my primary focus is doing everything in my power to ensure a smooth transition, maintaining the momentum we’ve built.

I will forever be grateful for the opportunity to build and work alongside this remarkable team. Together, we’ve pushed the boundaries of scientific understanding in our quest to improve human well-being. While I may no longer be in the trenches with you, I will still be rooting for you all.

With deep gratitude for the friendships forged, the triumphs achieved, and most importantly, the challenges overcome together.

Mira”

Bob Mcgrew

“The last eight years of OpenAl has been a humbling and awe-inspiring journey. The small non-profit I joined in January 2017 has become the most important research and deployment company in the world.

I have truly enjoyed working alongside an entire company full of brilliant, committed individuals – there is no other place like this in the world. I’m immensely proud of the work that our research team has done over these years, from our early achievements in RL to pioneering LLMs to building the first multimodal generative models to transforming the world with ChatGPT.

It is time for me to take a break. There is no better capstone to my work here than shipping 01 to the world.

Moving forward, Mark Chen will be leading the research team as the SVP alongside Jakub as the Chief Scientist. I will continue to support Mark, Jakub, and the team during the transition for the next two months. I have great confidence in their leadership to take OpenAl’s research to AGI and beyond. I can’t wait to see what this team does next.”