OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman goes on sabbatical

OpenAI's co-founder and President Greg Brockman is leaving the company for a while. He writes on X that he will be taking a sabbatical until the end of the year. It will be the first time since OpenAI was founded nine years ago that he has taken time to relax. The fact that he will be back is also emphasized by his statement that there is still a lot to do before AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). Two other employees are also set to leave the company – completely.

Brockman is one of eleven founders of OpenAI. He was previously head developer at payment service provider Stripe. The other founders are known to include Sam Altman, who formerly worked at Y Combinator, i.e. in the investment sector. Ilya Sutskever joined the founding team as a machine learning expert from Google. He left OpenAI – together with security researcher Jan Leike, among others – a few months ago because he was apparently not happy with the way security was handled. Peter Thiel (PayPal), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn) and other major investors supported the founding of the AI company from the outset.

When there was major turbulence at the top of OpenAI last fall and Sam Altman was briefly thrown out, Greg Brockman stood by him. He initially left OpenAI with him, but returned with Altman when he was reinstated. Until now. It remains to be seen whether Brockman is simply taking time out on a whim.

OpenAI has been on an all-time high since the release of ChatGPT, driven to publish a new and even better AI model and, above all, to drive forward the development of an AGI. According to their own statements, they are constantly moving closer to this goal. However, the actual status of general intelligence is not known. The statements might also be about keeping investors on board. OpenAI does not currently see any other financing option. The costs of developing and operating the AI systems are higher than the income from using the AI services.

OpenAI employees move to the competition

However, two other employees are leaving OpenAI permanently. John Schulman, also one of the founders, is moving to competitor Anthropic. Schulman was responsible for the "post-training team". He has published his parting words to his colleagues at OpenAI on X. He writes there that he wants to work more "hands-on" on the technology again. Apparently, he believes that Anthropic's direction suits him better: "The decision stems from my desire to focus more on the strategic direction of AI."

Anthropic was founded by former employees of OpenAI. According to its own statements, the company focuses on the responsible use of AI. At Anthropic, Schulman reunites with Jan Leike, the former security researcher from OpenAI, who also moved to the competition. Nevertheless, Sam Altman thanks Schulman at X for everything he has done for OpenAI and calls him a brilliant scientist.

Peter Deng is also leaving OpenAI. He was employed as a product manager at the AI company and has an extremely successful past: Facebook, Instagram, Uber. Deng was successful at many tech companies in Silicon Valley, switching when he reached his peak.

It is no surprise that people move between tech companies in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, but the number of changes and turbulence at OpenAI is astonishing. In the past, employees have made negative remarks about OpenAI as an employer. There was talk of a toxic atmosphere. Former board member Helen Toner says that Sam Altman lied to the board. A former employee, Richard Aschenbrenner, has published a page-long essay in which he accuses OpenAI of not doing enough for the security of the systems. However, he also warns of an all-out war with China.

(emw)