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OpenAI's leadership from left to right: Mira Murati, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever. Photo: NYT

Of the four OpenAI executives in the March 2023 photo, only one remains. That’s CEO Sam Altman. Two have left, one is preparing.

The latest to leave is Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, who said on September 25 that she would be leaving after six and a half years with the developer of ChatGPT. As one of Altman's closest advisers, she was in charge of most of the company's day-to-day operations, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Murati, however, also played a role in Altman’s ouster last November, before he returned just days later. She reportedly questioned the CEO about governance and shared her concerns with the board. The New York Times reported that OpenAI’s board used her criticism to force Altman out.

Murati's announcement comes as OpenAI prepares to transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit operating model.

Another prominent figure in the 2023 effort to oust Altman is co-founder and board member Ilya Sutskever, who left OpenAI, raising the alarm that Altman was not paying attention to the risks of AI and was “not being straightforward” with the board.

After Altman was reinstated, Sutskever stayed on as chief scientist but was removed from the board of directors and largely out of public view. He decided to step down in May, after nearly a decade at OpenAI, to start his own AI company, Safe Superintelligence.

The third person in the photo to leave is President Greg Brockman. In May, he shared on X that he would be taking a leave of absence for the rest of the year. “First time relaxing since co-founding OpenAI 9 years ago,” he wrote.

In addition to the three people in the iconic photo, OpenAI has also lost a number of other employees. On the same day, September 25, Director of Research Bob McGrew and Vice President of Research Barret Zoph announced their departures. Last month, co-founder John Schulman “jumped ship” to rival company Anthropic.

Altman admits that the loss of OpenAI's top talent is unusual.

“Changing leadership is a natural part of any business, especially one that is growing rapidly and is demanding. Obviously, I can’t pretend that this kind of sudden change is normal, but we are not a normal company,” the OpenAI CEO wrote on X.

(According to Fortune)