The core crew that helped Sam Altman start OpenAI has dwindled ...
OpenAI is barely a decade old, but nearly three-quarters of its founding team has left its top ranks since its inception. On Monday, the company's cofounder and head of its alignment science efforts, John Schulman, said he'd "made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI for its rival Anthropic.
"This choice stems from my desire to deepen my focus on AI alignment, and to start a new chapter of my career where I can return to hands-on technical work," Schulman wrote in an X post.
"To be clear, I'm not leaving due to lack of support for alignment research at OpenAI," he added. "My decision is a personal one, based on how I want to focus my efforts in the next phase of my career."
Changes in Leadership
OpenAI CEO Altman penned a thank-you post to Schulman on X shortly after, praising Schulman as a "brilliant researcher" and "deep thinker about products and society."
"We're grateful for John's contributions as a founding team member at OpenAI and his dedicated efforts in advancing alignment research," OpenAI said in a statement to TechCrunch.
This makes Schulman the eighth cofounder who has left OpenAI since its founding in 2015. Only three of the original 11 founding members remain — Altman, language and code generation lead Wojciech Zaremba, and president Greg Brockman.
Recent Exits
Brockman, notably, said on Monday that he will be "taking a sabbatical through the end of year."
Besides Schulman, OpenAI has seen multiple exits among its leadership ranks in recent months. In May, OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever announced his resignation from the company.
Sutskever leaving OpenAI wasn't a huge surprise, given that he'd worked with fellow board members to oust Altman as CEO in November. He started his own AI company, Safe Superintelligence Inc., a month after resigning from OpenAI.
Disagreements and Departures
Sutskever's departure coincided with other top-level exits, including his co-lead for OpenAI's superalignment team, Jan Leike. Like Schulman, Leike is now working at Anthropic.
OpenAI didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.
