Read her full memo to staff, which she shared online, below:

Hello everyone,

I would like to share something with you. After careful consideration, I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAl.

My six and a half years on the OpenAl team have been an extraordinary privilege. I will be thanking many people over the next few days, but first I would like to thank Sam and Greg for their trust in me to lead the technical organization and for their support over the years.

There’s never an ideal time to leave a place you cherish, but this moment feels right. Our recent releases of Speech-to-Speech and OpenAl o1 mark the beginning of a new era of interaction and intelligence – achievements made possible by your ingenuity and craftsmanship. We’ve not only built smarter models, we’ve fundamentally changed the way AI systems learn and tackle complex problems.

We’ve taken security research from theory to practice, developing models that are more robust, tuned, and tractable than ever before. Our work has made cutting-edge artificial intelligence research intuitive and accessible, and developed technologies that adapt and evolve with everyone’s input. This success is a testament to our outstanding teamwork, and it’s thanks to your genius, dedication, and commitment that OpenAl is at the forefront of AI innovation.

I’m stepping back because I want to create time and space for my own exploration. Right now, my main focus is doing everything I can to ensure a smooth transition and maintain the momentum we’ve built.

I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to build and work with this remarkable team. Together, we have pushed the boundaries of scientific understanding to improve human well-being.

Even though I am no longer in the trenches with you, I will continue to keep my fingers crossed for all of you.

With deep gratitude for the friendships we have made, the triumphs we have achieved and, most importantly, the challenges we have overcome together.

Mira

Originally from Albania, Murati joined OpenAI in 2018 after working at Tesla, where she oversaw the teams that developed two of the AI ​​giant’s most important products: ChatGPT and the image generator Dall-E.

In addition to leading these large teams, Murati has also been a key public figure for OpenAI, appearing in the company’s videos and being available for interviews with journalists.

When Altman was abruptly removed from the company’s board in 2023, Murati played a key role, according to the New York Times, having raised concerns about his leadership style to the board and directly to Altman.

At the time, Murati’s lawyer fought back, saying she had not approached the board to request Altman’s dismissal and was surprised by its decision.

The Times also reported that OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, who left the company in May, raised similar concerns.

Hours after Sutskever’s departure, Jan Leike, co-leader of OpenAI’s Superalignment group, announced his resignation.

OpenAI lost more executives in August when President Greg Brockman announced a sabbatical. At the same time, Vice President of Consumer Products Peter Deng left the company and co-founder John Schulman moved to rival AI company Anthropic.

A former researcher at the company, Daniel Kokotajlo, also said OpenAI’s security team had been cut in almost half in about a year.

The company is trying to raise capital from companies like Thrive Capital, Microsoft and Apple, reaching a staggering valuation of $150 billion.

Earlier this month, the company unveiled o1, an AI model designed to “think” more like humans and solve complex problems in science, programming and mathematics.

In addition, the restructuring of the Security Committee was announced, of which Altman is no longer a member.