OpenAI Research Director Departs Following CTO Mira Murati’s Departure

OpenAI Research Director Bob McGrew and Research Vice President Barrett Zoph left the corporate hours after OpenAI CTO Mira Murati announced her departure.

CEO Sam Altman revealed two recent resignations in fasting on Wednesday evening, with plans for a leadership change.

“Mira, Bob and Barrett made these decisions independently and amicably,” he said, “but the timing of Mira’s decision was such that it made sense to do it all at once so that we could work together to ensure a smooth transition to the next generation of leadership.”

Vice President of Research Mark Chen can be promoted to the brand new senior vp of research at OpenAI, leading the corporate’s research division in partnership with Jakub Pachocki as chief scientist, Altman said.

Matt Knight, previously head of security, can be OpenAI’s chief information security officer. And Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil and Vice President of Engineering Srinivas Narayanan will proceed to guide OpenAI’s applications team, which is accountable for delivering the corporate’s technology to each enterprise and consumer customers.

Josh Achiam, a research scientist, will tackle a brand new role as head of mission alignment. Altman says he’ll “work across the company to make sure all the pieces and culture are right to get to a place where the mission is successful.”

“Mark, Jacob, Kevin, Srinivas, Matt, and Josh will report to me,” Altman added. “For the past year or more, I’ve spent most of my time on the nontechnical parts of our organization; now I’m looking forward to spending most of my time on the technical and product parts of the company.”

In his post, Altman tried to guarantee staff — and outsiders — that leadership changes are simply the conventional course of events.

“Changes in leadership are a natural part of businesses, especially those that grow so quickly and are so demanding,” he said. “I certainly won’t pretend it’s natural that this happened so suddenly, but we’re not a normal company, and I think the reasons Mira explained to me (there’s never a good time, anything that wasn’t sudden would leak, and she wanted to do it while OpenAI was still in growth mode) make sense.”

McGrew simply said that “it was time for him to take a break.”

“The last eight years of OpenAI have been a journey of humility and awe for me,” he added in his speech. fasting on X. “The small nonprofit I joined in January 2017 has grown into the most important research and implementation company in the world… I have great confidence in (OpenAI)’s leadership.”

McGrew joined OpenAI in 2017 as a member of the technical team and was promoted to vp of research in 2018 before becoming director of research.

Zoph, who joined OpenAI in 2022, said in fasting that “(it) seemed like a natural moment” to “explore new opportunities beyond OpenAI.”

Zoph led the post-training team tasked with training and refining OpenAI models before deploying them in products corresponding to ChatGPT and the OpenAI API, in addition to other internal OpenAI research teams.

“It’s a personal decision based on how I want to develop the next phase of my career,” he continued.

OpenAI’s departing executives can publicly say the splits are amicable. But their moves come on the heels of reports that OpenAI is on the verge of transitioning from a nonprofit to a for-profit entity, with Altman set to receive a 7% stake in OpenAI.

With a brand new round of financing set to shut soon, valuing the corporate at $150 billion, disagreements over the corporate’s direction could prove to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

We’ll actually learn more details tomorrow when OpenAI holds a staff meeting.