Most of the founding members of OpenAI have already left, highlighting the growing tension between its non-profit mission and commercial transformation. Some analysts suggest that the reason for the staff turnover may also be related to Musk's lawsuit this week.
OpenAI, as a pioneer of artificial intelligence, seems to have run into some trouble lately. The successive high-level personnel changes have attracted widespread attention in the industry. Especially in recent months, there has been a new round of departures. Currently, only 2 of the 11 people remain in the company. President Greg Brockman is one of them. He announced last week that he will take a year off, saying, "This is the first relaxation after jointly creating OpenAI 9 years ago." The whereabouts of former research director Ilya Sutskever have prompted more speculation. He announced the establishment of a new company, Safe Superintelligence Inc., in June, saying that the company only focuses on one goal: achieving safe superintelligence through revolutionary breakthroughs. This coincides with the original intention of OpenAI as a non-profit organization. Since its establishment, the non-profit identity of OpenAI has been highly concerned. However, the tension between its non-profit mission and commercial transformation has become increasingly apparent, leading to the departure of core team members. Some analysts have also suggested that the reason for the loss of personnel may be related to Musk's lawsuit this week.
In recent months, there has been a new round of departures. Currently, only 2 of the 11 people remain in the company.
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The whereabouts of former research director Ilya Sutskever have prompted more speculation. He announced the establishment of a new company, Safe Superintelligence Inc., in June, saying that the company only focuses on one goal: achieving safe superintelligence through revolutionary breakthroughs. This coincides with the original intention of OpenAI as a non-profit organization.
Since its establishment, the non-profit identity of OpenAI has been highly concerned. However, the tension between its non-profit mission and commercial transformation has become increasingly apparent, leading to the departure of core team members. Some analysts have also suggested that the reason for the loss of personnel may be related to Musk's lawsuit this week.
The transformation of non-profit mission: drifting away from the original intention
In late 2015, OpenAI announced its establishment to the world. This declaration of just over 600 words began:
OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to promote digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit all humanity, free from the constraints of generating financial returns. Because our research has no financial obligations, we can better focus on producing positive outcomes for humanity.
We believe that artificial intelligence should be an extension of individual human will and, as such, should be distributed as broadly and evenly as possible, as a free and open pursuit. The outcome of this venture is uncertain and the work is difficult, but we believe the goal and structure are right. We hope this is what matters most to the best within the field.
The two named authors of this article are Greg Brockman, who is on vacation, and Ilya Sutskever, who has resigned.
Today's OpenAI seems to have strayed from the original declaration, as have Sam Altman and other founding members.
In 2019, OpenAI announced the establishment of OpenAI LP, a capped-profit company, to attract external investment. This structure allows investors to receive a certain return while limiting the company's earning capacity, thereby maintaining its original non-profit nature.
Perhaps it is this transformation that has caused the tension within the company, with many original team members leaving due to dissatisfaction with OpenAI's gradual commercialization direction. As Sam Altman's power within OpenAI grew, he began to have the ability to promote OpenAI according to his own ideas.
Of course, most companies must constantly advance in their development. But most companies do not set such a distinct banner of idealism at the beginning--which turns out to be unsatisfactory. Of course, OpenAI is still a non-profit organization to some extent, because it hasn't made a profit yet.
Some analysts have also suggested that the reason for the loss of personnel may be related to Musk's lawsuit this week. This week, Musk filed a lawsuit against Altman in federal court, accusing himself of being misled into participating in the creation of OpenAI.
Musk claims that he made his investment based on OpenAI's commitment to operating as a non-profit organization, but later discovered that Altman and partners such as Microsoft had created a series of opaque, profit-making subsidiaries, and were suspected of engaging in serious self-dealing. This new lawsuit is similar to the one Musk filed earlier this year in California against OpenAI and Altman, which he eventually withdrew.
Like other money-burning AI startups, OpenAI currently faces tremendous financial pressure. Many smaller AI companies choose to be acquired by large companies, but Sam Altman has been conducting large-scale financing. Although there is Microsoft's $1 billion support, the relationship between the two companies seems to have become unstable recently, with the honeymoon period broken and the situation getting more complicated.
Like other money-burning AI startups, OpenAI currently faces tremendous financial pressure. Many smaller AI companies choose to be acquired by large companies, but Sam Altman has been conducting large-scale financing. Although there is Microsoft's $1 billion support, the relationship between the two companies seems to have become unstable recently, with the honeymoon period broken and the situation getting more complicated.
After exiting the OpenAI board, Microsoft last week officially listed OpenAI as a competitor.
Some analysts believe that OpenAI is likely to seek new large investors, such as Apple, Saudi Arabia or SoftBank.
Meanwhile, GPT-5 seems to be experiencing a 'difficult birth.' There are reports that the development of GPT-5 is much slower than expected. Although everyone hopes to see results before the end of the year, the official has already announced at the developer conference this fall that no new models will be released.
Tech media TechCrunch believes that OpenAI has taken more progressive steps in recent months, including focusing on optimizing the performance of existing models GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini. However, as the difficulty of obtaining high-quality training data increases, OpenAI's technological lead in generative AI competitions may weaken.
Pressure also comes from the strong competitors Meta. Meta's Zuckerberg publicly stated that the computing resources required to train the next-generation model Llama 4 are ten times that of the previous generation. This reveals the huge cost required to train large models, and also suggests the funding pressure that OpenAI may face-because Meta is a profit-making company, while OpenAI is currently non-profit.
Developing advanced AI models requires huge resources and time, and the competition between open source and closed source models is becoming more and more intense. More and more people, including Zuckerberg, believe that open source AI models (such as Meta's Llama) have advantages over closed source models (such as OpenAI's GPT).
Now, OpenAI is at a critical crossroads. Whether the company's core competitiveness can still maintain its advantage has become the focus of the industry's attention. In addition, whether the ultimate goal of the field of artificial intelligence-universal artificial intelligence (AGI)-is still the pursuit of the company, or whether it turns to more commercial product development, has become an important decision for OpenAI.
Appendix: OpenAI Leadership Personnel Changes
Greg Brockman: On leave from August 2024
Brockman is a core member of the OpenAI founding team. At the urging of Altman and Musk, he resigned from his position as chief technology officer of fintech company Stripe and took on the same position at OpenAI. He has been Altman's key ally from the beginning. When the board of directors opposed Altman in the coup in November, Brockman was also dismissed as a director. Five days later, when the board of directors withdrew, they both returned to their posts together. On Monday, he announced that he will be on leave for the rest of the year. 'Since I co-founded OpenAI 9 years ago, this is the first time I have relaxed,' he wrote on X. 'In the past 9 years, I have devoted my life to OpenAI, including my entire marriage. Our work is important to me, but so is life.'
John Schulman: Joining Anthropic in August 2024
Schulman, a research scientist who played an important role in developing the ChatGPT chatbot at the development company, announced on Monday that he will leave OpenAI. He is responsible for finetuning the company's AI models and ensuring that the behavior of these models is in line with human values, a process called 'alignment.' He will take on a similar position at rival startup Anthropic, which was founded by former OpenAI researchers in 2021. Schulman said in a notice to colleagues on Monday: 'This choice comes from my desire to focus more deeply on AI alignment issues, and at the same time to start a new chapter in my career, to be deeply involved with people who are most interested in the topics that interest me, and to be re-engaged in the process of practical technical work.'
Ilya Sutskever: Leaving in May 2024, founding the secure superintelligence company SSI
After voting with the board of directors to impeach Altman six months ago, Sutskever left his position as chief scientist at OpenAI. As one of the most famous researchers in the field, Sutskever changed his position a few days later and supported the CEO's return. However, since the unsuccessful change, he has basically disappeared from the public eye and founded a company in May of this year.
Andrej Karpathy: Founded Eureka Labs in February 2024
Karpathy is a research scientist who was advised by 'AI mother' Li Feifei at Stanford University. He left OpenAI for the first time in 2017 and became a senior director at Tesla. He returned to OpenAI in 2023 and left again one year later to found Eureka Labs, which is developing AI teaching assistants.
Durk Kingma: Left for Google Brain in June 2018
Kingma devoted himself to developing algorithms for generative AI models. He left OpenAI for Google in the summer of 2018. He continued to lead the research of large language models and image models at Google Brain. The team merged with DeepMind last year.
Elon Musk: Resigned from the board of directors in 2018
After providing a lot of early funding for OpenAI, Musk left the company in 2018 due to conflicts with Altman over research directions. The billionaire founded a competing company called xAI last year and claimed that he could surpass OpenAI's leading position.
As the leader of Tesla, SpaceX, and X, he also launched multiple lawsuits against Altman and OpenAI, and stated this week that he was induced to invest in the AI company because of its 'false humanitarian mission.'
Pamela Vagata: Joined STRIPE in 2016.
Vagata was listed as a founding member of OpenAI in the company's release announcement, but did not mention the startup on her LinkedIn profile. She joined Stripe in 2016 as the head of AI technology for the fintech company and founded early-stage venture capital firm Pebblebed in 2021.
Vicki Cheung: joined Lyft in 2017.
Before becoming the first engineer at OpenAI, Cheung worked at language-learning app Duolingo and left the company in 2017 to join ride-hailing startup Lyft. In 2020, she co-founded machine learning startup Gantry with former OpenAI researcher Josh Tobin.
Trevor Blackwell: left in 2017.
Blackwell, a robotics enthusiast, was a partner at Y Combinator, the San Francisco startup accelerator Altman operated before founding OpenAI. He helped co-found the AI company and left in 2017. He now resides in Gloucestershire, United Kingdom.
Current members:
Sam Altman
After surviving a boardroom coup in November, Altman continued as the CEO of OpenAI, during which time directors accused him of not being "completely forthright" with them. He was reinstated after a campaign by OpenAI employees and investors, including Microsoft.
The departures of other senior executives have made this 39-year-old the most prominent figure in the company thus far, and a board restructuring following a failed attempt to remove him further cemented his power.
Wojciech Zaremba
Polish computer scientist Zaremba remains at OpenAI as a researcher. After he spoke out against Altman, he called for the board to resign and urged his CEO and Musk to abandon their "unnecessary feud." "It would be better if you (both) focus your creativity into building the future you're dreaming of instead of in feuding," he wrote in a March post, signed with a heart.
Editor/Lambor