OpenAI is facing a new leadership test after three senior figures announced departures on the same day, just as the company is reported to be considering a major change to its corporate structure.
Mira Murati, OpenAI’s Chief Technical Officer, said on Wednesday that she is leaving the company after six-and-a-half years. Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew and VP of Research Barret Zoph also resigned independently, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, though Altman said the timing may have been influenced by Murati’s news.
Why the OpenAI departures matter
Murati joined OpenAI in 2018 and became one of its most visible technical leaders. As CTO, she oversaw technical strategy and product development across major OpenAI systems and platforms, including DALL-E, Codex, Sora and ChatGPT.
Her role also included leadership across research and safety teams. In public appearances, she often addressed ethical issues in AI development, placing her near the center of OpenAI’s product, research and safety conversations.
In her message to staff, Murati wrote, "After much reflection, I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI." She also thanked Sam Altman and Greg Brockman for trusting her to lead the technical organization and supporting her over the years.
Murati did not lay out a specific next job or project. She said she wanted to "create the time and space to do my own exploration," framing the move as a personal decision rather than a defined transition to another role.
Restructuring questions are now unavoidable
The departures landed while OpenAI is reportedly working on a major governance change. According to a Reuters report published on Wednesday, the company is exploring a reorganization that would move its core business into a for-profit benefit corporation and remove control from its nonprofit board.
The reported restructuring could give Altman a reported 7 percent equity stake in OpenAI for the first time. The same report said the change could potentially value OpenAI at $150 billion.
That combination made the timing difficult to ignore: three senior research and technical leaders leaving as OpenAI considers a structure that would change how control is held at the company. Altman rejected the idea that the events were connected.
At the Italian Tech Week conference in Turin, as reported by Reuters, Altman addressed speculation directly. "That’s totally not true," he said, adding that the board had been looking at restructuring for almost a year, separate from the recent personnel changes.
What each departing leader said
Murati’s announcement emphasized OpenAI’s recent work, including speech-to-speech technology and OpenAI o1. She also pointed to progress in safety research and the development of "more robust, aligned, and steerable" AI models.
McGrew described his exit as a break after the release of o1. In an X post, he wrote, "It is time for me to take a break. There is no better capstone to my work here than shipping o1 to the world."
Zoph also described his departure as personal and career-driven. He wrote, "Right now feels like a natural point for me to explore new opportunities outside of OpenAI. This is a personal decision based on how I want to evolve the next phase of my career."
Altman responded publicly to Murati’s announcement with thanks for her work and personal support. His message referred to what she had helped OpenAI build and suggested gratitude for her support during difficult periods, likely including November 2023, when OpenAI’s board of directors briefly fired him from the company.
A wider pattern of leadership churn
These exits are not isolated from a broader period of senior-level movement at OpenAI. In May 2024, former Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever left to create Safe Superintelligence, Inc. (SSI), a company focused on building AI systems that far surpass humans in logical capabilities.
That move came six months after Sutskever’s involvement in Altman’s temporary removal as CEO. Earlier in 2024, OpenAI co-founder John Schulman left to join Anthropic, and in August, OpenAI President Greg Brockman announced a temporary sabbatical until the end of the year.
The sequence has kept attention on OpenAI’s internal dynamics under Altman. It has also raised questions about the company’s research path toward artificial general intelligence, or AGI, described as a hypothetical technology that could potentially perform human-level intellectual work.
One critical reaction came from xAI developer Benjamin De Kraker, who asked on X why key people would leave an organization if it were close to developing AGI. He compared the timing to leaving NASA months before the moon landing and questioned why people would not want to remain involved.
Altman moves closer to technical leadership
OpenAI has not announced a new CTO to replace Murati. Altman later said that Mark Chen would become SVP of Research and Josh Achiam would become head of Mission Alignment.
Those changes suggest that some of Murati’s responsibilities may be divided across multiple roles rather than handed to one direct successor. Altman also said Chen, Achiam and other members of technical staff would report directly to him.
Altman described a shift in his own focus as well. He wrote that over the past year or so he had spent most of his time on non-technical parts of the organization, and that he now expected to spend most of his time on the technical and product parts of the company.
For OpenAI, the immediate issue is not just replacing departed leaders. The company must also manage the perception of a leadership reset at the same time it is reportedly considering a structure that could reshape control, valuation and Altman’s role in the business.