The chief technology officer of OpenAI, Mira Maruti is leaving the company.
She wrote on X, “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.”
Along with Maruti, there are two other OpenAI leaders who are also leaving the company. Bob McGrew, the Chief Research Officer, and Barret Zoph, VP of post-training.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a post on X that they “made these decisions independently of each other and amicably.”
This comes just a year after the boardroom coup that shook the AI startup and CEO Sam Altman.
In her six years with the company, she oversaw the launch of ChatGPT and OpenAI’s text-to-image generator, DALL-E.
Sam Altman wrote in his note to employees. “Leadership changes are a natural part of companies, especially companies that grow so quickly and are so demanding. I obviously won’t pretend it’s natural for this one to be so abrupt, but we are not a normal company, and I think the reasons Mira explained to me (there is never a good time, anything not abrupt would have leaked, and she wanted to do this while OpenAI was in an upswing) make sense.”
This news comes just before OpenAI’s annual Dev Day conference in San Francisco next week.
OpenAI raised billions of dollars in funding this year and they are shifting to become a for-profit company. According to Bloomberg, the company is discussing giving Sam Altman a 7 percent equity stake in the for-profit entity.
