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Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer who temporarily served as chief executive during the failed coup against founder Sam Altman, is leaving the company.
In a message shared with the company’s employees on Wednesday, she said: “After much reflection, I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI”.
It is the latest blow to the Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence start-up, which has had high-profile departures this year, including founders John Schulman and Ilya Sutskever. Schulman has joined rival Anthropic, while Sutskever has launched his own venture aimed at building “safe” AI models.
Murati, 35, spent six and a half years at the company and was made interim CEO after OpenAI’s board ousted Altman last year for what they said was his failure to be candid. Murati was in the position for four days until Altman returned, following intense pressure from investors and staff. He was later cleared of wrongdoing following a review into his conduct.
OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, is one of Silicon Valley’s most valuable start-ups. It is in discussions to raise more than $6bn at a $150bn valuation. It recently released new models known as o1 that it says are capable of reasoning.
“There’s never an ideal time to step away from a place one cherishes, yet this moment feels right,” she wrote. Murati said she was leaving because she wished to “create the time and space to do my own exploration”. She added her primary focus would be to “ensure a smooth transition”.
“While I may no longer be in the trenches with you, I will still be rooting for you all,” she wrote.
In her time at OpenAI, Murati led the company’s efforts to build ChatGPT as a standalone product, building on the technical breakthroughs made with GPT, the large language model that underpins it. She also oversaw releases and improvements of the company’s image-generator Dall-E and AI code generator Codex.
She joined the company in 2018, having previously worked at augmented reality start-up Magic Leap and electric-car maker Tesla. At the time, OpenAI was a non-profit dedicated to ensuring that artificial general intelligence — which aims to replicate human intelligence — would benefit all of humanity. In 2019, it became a for-profit enterprise, allowing it to raise large amounts of capital from the likes of Microsoft, which has invested $13bn.
Altman thanked Murati for her contributions in response to her announcement. “It’s hard to overstate how much Mira has meant to OpenAI, our mission, and to us all personally,” he said. “I feel tremendous gratitude towards her for what she has helped us build and accomplish, but I most of all feel personal gratitude towards her for the support and love during all the hard times.”
Her successor has not been announced.
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