Three top technology leaders at Microsoft-backed OpenAI stepped down on Wednesday, the latest in a series of executive departures that come at a tumultuous time for the ChatGate maker this year.
Chief Technology Officer Mira Muratti, VP Research Barrett Zoff and Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew all announced their departures via X on Wednesday afternoon.
The San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup is in talks with a new funding round of $6.5 billion (roughly Rs. 54,398 crores) that would value the company at $150 billion (roughly Rs. 12,55,360 crores), according to the company’s corporate structure. Dependent on changes in. ,
Reuters reported on Wednesday that the company plans to restructure into a for-profit corporation and give an equity stake to CEO Sam Altman. Currently, a non-profit board controls the for-profit entity, an unusual structure that led to non-profit board members ousting Altman in November 2023 due to a breakdown in communication and loss of trust. He was reinstated after five days.
The funding round is not closed yet and the company is in the process of finalizing it.
It was unclear whether the officials’ departure would impact ongoing fundraising. Some fundraising documents contain a “material adverse change” clause that allows investors to withdraw from a deal if the company encounters something that could have a significant negative impact.
According to a source close to Murati, Murati is still working at OpenAI while he is in talks to exit the company. She has been part of the ChatGPIT creator for 6-1/2 years, and briefly served as CEO in November when the board temporarily appointed Altman.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Murati joined OpenAI in December 2020 as “VP of Applied AI and Partnerships” and was promoted to CTO in May 2022. Before OpenAI, he worked at virtual and augmented reality startup Leap Motion and Tesla.
As CTO, Murati often appeared alongside Altman as the public face of the ChatGPIT creator. When OpenAI launched its GPT-4o model in May, capable of holding conversations in a realistic voice, Murati led the presentation.
“I’m stepping away because I want to make time and space to do my own self-discovery,” Muratti wrote in a post on X.
Muratti, Zoff and McGrew are the latest in a series of executive departures from OpenAI. In August, OpenAI co-founder John Shulman said on X that he had joined rival AI company Anthropic and another co-founder, Greg Brockman, also said on X that he was taking a sabbatical until the end of the year. The third co-founder, chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, left OpenAI in May.
At In the same post, Altman also announced several internal promotions: Matt Knight was made chief information security officer, Josh Achiam was made head of mission alignment, and Mark Chen was made senior vice president of research.
© Thomson Reuters 2024
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