Sam Altman sent a message to the OpenAI team after Mira Murati (CTO) left:

"Hello everyone-

Mira has been instrumental to the progress and growth of OpenAI over the past 6.5 years; she has played a critical role in our evolution from an unknown research lab to a major company.

"When Mila told me this morning that she was leaving, I was saddened but of course supportive of her decision. Over the past year, she has been developing a strong leadership team that continues to drive our progress."

I also wanted to share that Bob and Barrett have decided to leave OpenAI. Mira, Bob, and Barrett made these decisions individually and amicably, but the timing of Mira’s decision was right, and it made sense to make them simultaneously now so that we can work together to smoothly transition to the next generation of leadership.

I am very grateful to all of them for their contributions.

Being the leader of OpenAI is an all-consuming experience. On the one hand, I am honored to have built AGI, become the fastest-growing company, and make our advanced research available to hundreds of millions of people. On the other hand, it is also a relentless experience to lead the team to accomplish all of this - they have gone above and beyond the call of duty.

Mark will become our new Senior Vice President of Research and will now lead the Research organization in partnership with Jakub as Chief Scientist. This has been our long-term succession plan for Bob; while this is coming sooner than we thought, I am very excited about Mark taking over this role. Mark obviously has deep technical expertise, but he has also learned how to be a leader and manager in a very impressive way over the past few years.

Josh Achiam will take on the new role of Head of Mission Coordination, working across the company to ensure we get all the pieces (and culture) right to be able to successfully complete the mission.

Kevin and Srinivas will continue to lead the Applied Materials team.

Matt Knight will serve as our Chief Information Security Officer, a position he has held for a long time. This has been our plan for a long time.

Mark, Jakub, Kevin, Srinivas, Matt, and Josh will report to me. I have spent most of my time over the past year or so in the non-technical parts of our organization; now I look forward to spending the majority of my time in the technical and product parts of the company.

Tonight, we will be gathering in 575 starting at 5:30 PM. Mira, Bob, Barret, and Mark will be there. We will be there to express our gratitude and reflect on all that we have accomplished together. Then, tomorrow, we will have a general meeting where we will be available to answer any questions. Calendar invitations will be mailed out soon.

Leadership changes are a natural part of companies, especially ones that grow so quickly and are so demanding. I’m certainly not going to pretend that it was natural for this change to be so sudden, but we’re not a normal company, and I think the reasons Mira explained to me (that there’s never a good time, that any change that isn’t sudden would leak, and that she wanted to do this while OpenAI is on the rise) make sense. We can discuss this further at the all-hands meeting tomorrow.

Thank you for all your hard work and dedication.

Sam