Three OpenAI executives exit firm, go on leave in latest shakeup

A trio of key OpenAI executives have left their posts in the latest leadership shakeup at CEO Sam Altman’s firm.

Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president and one of its 11 co-founders, revealed that he is taking an extended leave of absence through the end of the year.

“I’m taking a sabbatical through end of year. First time to relax since co-founding OpenAI 9 years ago,” Brockman wrote on X. “The mission is far from complete; we still have a safe AGI to build.”

Another co-founder, John Schulman, jumped ship to take a position at OpenAI rival Anthropic. Schulman helped lead the OpenAI team responsible for “post-training,” or efforts to hone the large-language models that power ChatGPT.

A third product executive, Peter Deng, has also departed, according to The Information, which noted the exits appeared to be unrelated.

The Post reached out to OpenAI for comment.

Schulman confirmed in a lengthy statement on X that he had “made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI.” He stressed that the move was not related to any disagreements regarding OpenAI’s work on “alignment” – an industry term on efforts to ensure advanced AI will safely work for the benefit of humanity.

“To be clear, I’m not leaving due to lack of support for alignment research at OpenAI,” Schulman said. “On the contrary, company leaders have been very committed to investing in this area.”

Altman responded with a message thanking Schulman for his work at OpenAI.

“You are a brilliant researcher, a deep thinker about product and society, and mostly, you are a great friend to all of us,” Schulman said. “We will miss you tremendously and make you proud of this place.”

OpenAI has contended with some internal turmoil since last fall, when Altman was briefly ousted by the previous iteration of the firm’s board of directors – only to later return as part of a deal that included a major overhaul of the nonprofit’s governance structure.”

Brockman was ousted from OpenAI’s board and resigned as its president at the same time that Altman was fired last November, though he also returned to his post as part of the restructuring.

More recently, Altman and his leadership team have faced criticism from former employees who allege they have pursued speedy product launches at the expense of safety.

In May, OpenAI disbanded its so-called “Superalignment” team, which was tasked with preventing outcomes that “could lead to the disempowerment of humanity or even human extinction.”

The team was dissolved shortly after two key leaders, Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, announced their resignations from the Sam Altman-led company.

OpenAI later announced the creation of a new oversight committee to handle safety-related issues at the firm.