OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati resigned on Wednesday, stating she wants “the time and space to do my own exploration.” Murati was one of the top three executives at the company responsible for ChatGPT, and had a turn as its leader last year during a period of uncertainty about CEO Sam Altman’s future.Read more about her brief leadership.
“There’s never an ideal time to step away from a place one cherishes, yet this moment feels right,” she conveyed in a message to OpenAI staff, which she also shared publicly on X.
In response to Murati’s post on X, Altman expressed his sentiments, indicating “it’s hard to overstate how much Mira has meant to OpenAI, our mission, and to all of us personally.” He also mentioned a “personal gratitude towards her for the support and love during all the hard times.”
A successor for her position was not immediately announced.
Murati, through a personal spokesperson, declined to provide further comment. OpenAI also declined to comment, referring inquiries to Murati’s tweet.
Murati previously worked at Tesla and Leap Motion before joining OpenAI in 2018. At that time, OpenAI was a small nonprofit research lab focused on developing an AI system capable of mirroring a wide range of human tasks. However, following the impressive success of ChatGPT, the organization has grown significantly and its focus has shifted towards commercial endeavors. The company has been reevaluating its nonprofit structure, while investors have shown a strong interest in investing billions of dollars into its future.
Murati joined OpenAI with the belief that AI “will be the most important set of technologies that humanity has ever built,” she stated in an interview with Fortune last year. “OpenAI’s mission really resonated with me, to build technology that benefits people.”
In November last year, OpenAI experienced a significant shakeup with a board coup that resulted in CEO Sam Altman being ousted from his position, temporarily replaced by Murati. The event led to a threat from most of the staff to resign, and after appeals from investors like Microsoft, which had invested billions into the company, Altman was restored to his position with a completely new board.
In the months that followed, several members of OpenAI’s leadership have stepped away from the company, along with senior engineering figures. Ilya Sutskever—one of the company’s first hires, the technical brains behind much of its earlier work, and a board member who had voted to remove Altman before recanting—resigned from the company in May.
Sutskever’s departure was followed shortly after by that of Jan Leike, an engineer who led work on long-term AI safety with Sutskever. John Schulman, the engineer who took over leadership of safety work, stepped down in August. In August, Greg Brockman, a cofounder of OpenAI and a board member who stood with Altman, said he was taking a sabbatical from the company until the end of the year.
A number of former OpenAI executives and researchers have gone on to start new AI companies. Notably, Sutskever this year launched Safe Superintelligence, which focuses on developing safe artificial intelligence. Former OpenAI research chief Dario Amodei and his sister Daniela in 2021 founded Anthropic, now one of the company’s primary rivals for customers.
A source familiar with the situation says Murati’s final day at OpenAI has not been decided and conversations are ongoing between her and OpenAI’s leadership to ensure a smooth transition.
