OpenAI co-founder joins Anthropic, President goes on vacation

OpenAI co-founder John Schulman has left the company and went to separate ways to pursue a new career at competitor Anthropic.

“I’ve made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI” Schulman posted this news on social media site X and confirmed his departure after 9 years.

OpenAI is developing new models and partnerships around the globe. Recently, the company introduced new changes in its GPT model and GPT-4o. This model comes with advanced voice communication with natural language processing.

Schulman created ChatGPT from the ground alongside other OpenAI co-founders and helped fine-tune generative AI models.

“I’ve decided to pursue this goal at Anthropic, where I believe I can gain new perspectives and do research alongside people deeply engaged with the topics I’m most interested in.” wrote Schulman.

In December last year, a drama unfolded at OpenAI when the board fired CEO Sam Altman and other key officials. However, these were reinstated with the involvement of Microsoft, the largest investor in the AI company. Schulman said that his exit doesn’t relate to any lack of support from the AI company.

“My decision is a personal one, based on how I want to focus my efforts in the next phase of my career,” he added.

“I am confident that OpenAI and the teams I was part of will continue to thrive without me. Post-training is in good hands and has a deep bench of amazing talent. I get too much credit for ChatGPT — Barret has done an incredible job building the team into the incredibly competent operation it is now, with Liam, Luke, and others. I’ve been heartened to see the alignment team coming together with some promising projects. With leadership from Mia, Boaz, and others, I believe the team is in very capable hands.” Schulman concluded.

Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president, is also taking a leave from his work through the end of the year.

“First time to relax since co-founding OpenAI 9 years ago.” Brockman posted on social media site on Monday.