10 MINUTES AGO: Sam Altman STUNNED As Top Employees LEAVE OpenAI

So what would OpenAI be without its drama? The company once again recently had a rather shocking announcement as the CTO Mira Marathi announced her departure in a heartfelt tweet where she explained her reasons for leaving Now I think the reason this kind of took everyone by surprise is the fact that over the last year we've seen many individuals from OpenAI. Not just individuals, I would say, but more those who are in executive and leadership positions, leaving OpenAI for what seems to be a variety of different reasons. But anyhow, let's dive into exactly why Mira Marathi is leaving OpenAI. Her statement that she recently said on.

Twitter so she says hi, I have.

Something to share with you. After much reflection, I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI. My six and a half years with the OpenAI team for have been an extraordinary privilege. While I'll express my gratitude to many individuals in the coming days, I want to start by thanking Sam Altman and Greg Brockman for their trust in me to lead the technical organization and for the support they've given me throughout the years. There's never an ideal time to step away from a place one cherishes, yet this moment feels right. Our recent releases of Speech to speech and opening eyes01 mark the beginning of a new era in interaction and intelligence, achievements made possible by your ingenuity and craftsmanship. We didn't merely build smarter models, we fundamentally changed how AI systems learn and reason through complex problems. We brought safety research from the theoretical realm into the practical application, creating models that are more robust and steerable than ever before. She then says that our work has made cutting edge AI research intuitive, accessible and developing technology that adapts and and evolves based on everyone's input. This success is a testament to our outstanding teamwork and it is because of your brilliance, your dedication and your commitment that OpenAI stands at the pinnacle of AI innovation. And then this is where she gets into exactly why she's stepping away. She says, I'm stepping away because I want to create the time and the space to do my own exploration. For now, my primary focus is doing everything in my power to ensure a smooth transition and maintaining the momentum we've built.

It says I will be forever grateful.

For the opportunity to build and work alongside this remarkable team. Together we've pushed the boundaries of scientific understanding in our quest to improve human well being. While I may no longer be in the trenches with you, I will still be rooting for you all with deep gratitude for the friendships forged, the triumphs achieved, and most importantly, the challenges overcome Together Mirror. So there we have it, guys. The full message from Miram Maratti, the current, or should I say former CTO of OpenAI. And I mean, the thing with OpenAI is that they often give rather vague statements. It does say here that I'm stepping away because I want the time and space to do my own exploration. It doesn't really say that I'm stepping away to start my own company, although that's what it could mean. Honestly, I think it's probably deliberately vague and it doesn't seem like this is something that people foresaw because of something I did see in a Bloomberg article. So I'm not sure if this is OpenAI drama. At first I didn't really think it was, and I don't really think it is, considering how much drama OpenAI has gone through. I think that if there was some drama, there would be a little bit more information. But I do think that this was rather surprising considering the fact that if we actually take a look at this. This is a screenshot from a Bloomberg article. I'll leave the tweet down in the description, but you can see right here that the Bloomberg article that discusses this says that on Wednesday, many employees were shocked by the announcement of Marathi's departure on the company's internal slack. So this is where they, you know, have the messages for everyone to talk about OpenAI. You know, the internal team, they said multiple OpenAI employees responded to the news with a WTF, which is basically what the flip emoji if you're a bit more tame in your language. But yeah, so I think, you know, employees responding to a what the flip? I think that goes to show that this is probably something that was rather abrupt. Maybe that's just my guess considering the fact that we didn't know about this at all. And. And I think it's just rather surprising considering that there weren't any signs of Mira Marathi leaving. And I think one of the biggest questions you do have to consistently ask yourself is that I think it's one of two things. Okay, it's either one of them is that OpenAI is a company that's like a house of cards that's going to fall at any time like a Theranos type company. Although I think that's a bit far stretched. And the reason I say that is because in the next slides, in the next few slides, I'm going to show you all of the, you know, people that have left OpenAI that were integral to its success. Or we can say that, you know, OpenAI has pretty much probably achieved their goal of AGI and they probably, you know, have achieved their goal of the roadmap in terms of, you know, not needing as many people to keep the mission going. Because of course if you develop AGI, you don't really need as many people to, you know, manage the AGI as before as you can, you know, duplicate that and use that to actually improve the AGI. But I think it might be a case of, you know, maybe she's moving on to, you know, be the CTO of another company or maybe perhaps even start her own thing. Because that's actually something that we have seen with Googlers. We've seen them leave Google DeepMind to actually start their own successful companies. Although there were some articles that said it is a lot harder that we think so.

I mean this is just something that.

Definitely took the OpenAI employees by surprise. Obviously the higher ups would have known that this is happening. But I mean this is why I say that is OpenAI a house of cards? And, and of course the products they're developing are absolutely outstanding. They're still at the forefront of AI. They're arguably two years ahead of where everyone else is. But it does become a little bit questionable if we look at all of these individuals that have recently left OpenAI. Elia Satskova, the co founder and chief scientist, he left for philosophical differences regarding the company's direction. Potential burnout. You've got John Shulman, if I'm not mistaken, someone that worked on the original version of ChatGPT. And then of course he left for his desire to focus on AI alignment and to pursue, you know, more hands on work at rival Anthropic Claude. Then of course we have Jan like.

Which was the co lead of arguably.

One of the most important teams which had disagreements over leadership priorities, you know, desire to focus on safety and of course the societal impact. We had Leopold Aschenbrenner, another member of the superalignment team. So we had, you know, him, Jan like and Ilya Satseva that were all part of the, you know, super alignment team and he was dismissed from OpenAI for allegedly leaking company secrets. But if you ever watched his interview, I wouldn't say he leaked company secrets. I think, I don't know, I think it's a little bit, you know, there's a little bit more to it than what they're stating. So of course we also had Logan Kilpatrick who is now at Google AI studio, he's working over there at Google AI. And of course we had Daniel Kokotalju, a researcher, basically saying that they're not going to behave responsibly. Of course we did have Andre Karpak, Kathy, who used to work at OpenAI, and we recently, interestingly enough, we had Greg Brockman go on a sabbatical. And the reason I think that like in the recent video where I spoke about this is because I spoke about how Greg Brockman said that he was going on sabbatical. I'm not trying to spread any information at all. That's exactly what he said. A sabbatical is basically where you take time off your company, then you come back. But I also said that this is exactly what Andrej Karpathy also said. You know, earlier at Tesla he said, you know, he was going on a sabbatical at Tesla and when he came back he just didn't go back to Tesla, he went to a different company. I think it was actually OpenAI or Google, I'm not entirely sure. But the point is that sabbatical is still quite uncertain. Like if your co founder, if your co CEO, the chairman goes on a six month sabbatical, your CTO quits, all of these people are quitting. I mean, the thing is, it's entirely up to speculation. We of course have no idea what's going on at OpenAI. She didn't give a concrete reason. So we really don't know exactly what's going on. But I will say this, it is probably one of the most fascina times to be in AI because it seems that the drama is never ending. And now of course the CTO is gone. Which marks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 notable OpenAI employees that have recently left from the company. And sometimes like thinking to myself that if this company is going to achieve so much, why on earth are people leaving? But I guess in Leopold Aschenberg's case, you know, unfortunately he got fired. But that's an entire other video. But I think overall what we do have here is a developing story. So I'm sure that there might be some more news coming out in the future. Because when Elias Sutskeva was like, people didn't know what was going on. At Opening Eye, we then saw him transition to say, superintelligence, where basically we saw that whatever he saw with Q Star, that these models can get to super intelligence. So I'm guessing that over the next part of the year, we've got a few months left till we wrap up the year. We'll see if Greg Bogman comes back and we'll also see where Mira Marathi decides to pursue her career and will be rather fascinating to see what goes on. Now, this wasn't the only notable story, because interestingly enough, at that time, now this wasn't the only notable story, because interestingly enough, at that time, what we did see was we did see something rather crazy. We did actually see the fact that OpenAI to remove nonprofit control and give Sam Altman equity, Sources say. So this is like, insane. Okay? And you might be thinking, why is this insane at all? Well, if you weren't paying attention exactly to what Sam Altman said last year, this article wouldn't be as crazy as it is for those of you that know exactly what was said. And I'm going to play to you guys what Sam Altman said last year.

Which is why some people think that.

This is rather strange, considering what he said. Okay, so let me just show you exactly what he said.

Someone else made this clip on Twitter.

I'm just sharing it with you guys for educational purposes. But Sam Altman, you know, removing the nonprofit control from OpenAI and giving someone equity is just incredible.

Take a look at this.

You make a lot of money, do you?

I make no. I paid enough for health insurance. I have no equity in open AI.

Really?

That's interesting. You need a lawyer.

I need a what?

You need a lawyer or an agent?

I. I'm doing this because I love it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks, Senator Kennedy.

So the reason, if you guys didn't just catch on to what I showed.

You guys there was that Sam Altman was basically saying, look, you know, I don't get paid in any equity. You know, I don't have any. You know, I guess you say equity and open AI, so it's not like I'm benefiting from this at all. I just do this. I love it. And then it's like, okay, opening eye, boom. Now changing the structure. And as a part of this restructuring, Sam Altman, you know, his equity could be worth, you know, 150 billion. Like, his equity could be worth 150.

Billion, which is insane.

I just want to reiterate.

Sam Altman won't receive $150 billion. The company is going to be worth $150 billion after the restructuring, which would give Sam Altman a significant fortune. However, I do want to state that whilst, yes, that's going to be a lot of money, Sam Altman is worth about 2 billion DOL. And that $2 billion, it doesn't even include OpenAI. So, I mean, this guy is already.

Very, very, very rich.

So it's one of those things where I'm guessing that, you know, this is just, I mean, I mean, it's like on the surface it does seem like, okay, this guy, like, is somewhat planning to restructure the company and then cash out his equity. I mean, I completely understand why it seems shady, but then again, this guy is worth $2 billion. So I'm not sure that money is.

You know, his real motivator there.

I mean, some people would argue that it's power or control or, you know, whatever it may be, but definitely, I don't think it's money. But the craziest thing about all of this, okay, is that, you know, whilst, yes, you know, OpenAI is now moving to, you know, this area where it's going to be for profit, there was.

Also this news that was literally just posted where someone else literally just left OpenAI.

So it feels like once again, another crazy season.

So we had this.

We had Barret Zof, okay, someone that did the VP of Research Post Training.

At OpenAI literally just said, hey, everybody, I've decided to leave OpenAI.

This was a very difficult decision as I have such an incredible time at OpenAI. I got to join right before ChatGPT.

And help build out the post training.

Team from scratch with John Shulman and others.

I feel grateful to have gotten the.

Opportunity to run the post training team and to help scale ChatGPT to where it is today.

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. I'm grateful for all the opportunities opening.

Has given me and all the support I have gotten from OpenAI leadership such as Sam and Greg. I am particularly grateful for everything Bob has done, being an excellent manager. And he says that OpenAI will continue to do incredible work and I'm very optimistic about the future trajectory of the company and will be rooting for everybody on. You can also see here that Noam Brown, the person working on reasoning at OpenAI, says you've built an amazing team and done incredible work here. We will miss you. And this is rather fascinating because once again I'm thinking that, like, if this company is going to be so successful, like they've just figured out reasoners, they're on the brink of AGI, why would anyone want to leave? I truly can't fathom that. Of course, you do have the idea that maybe some individuals are thinking that these guys have so Much equity and so much money. It's kind of like the Nvidia situation where, you know, they can kind of sell their equity and they don't really need it anymore so that they've got like millions and millions of dollars so they can really just chill on the beach somewhere as AGI, you know, eats up the economy. I guess you could say that is one kind of, you know, opinion that's like the kind of giant elephant in the room. Or there could be the thing that, you know, Opening Eye isn't as strong.

As we think it is. Now.

We also just got Sam Altman's response here, which was also rather fascinating too. Okay, so this is, this is, this is, this is a crazy thing. Okay. Like, this shows us as well. And this is why I say I truly don't understand what is going on. Opening Eye because this is what Sam Altman literally just tweeted. I think just tweeted this probably 26 minutes ago. Actually 15 minutes ago, he said, while literally while I was editing this video, he said that Mira has been instrumental to OpenAI progress for the last 6.5 years. She's been hugely, a hugely significant factor in our development. And the crazy thing here is that he said, when Mira informed me this morning that she was leaving, I was saddened, but of course supported her decision. The past year she's been building out a strong bench of leaders and that.

Will continue our progress.

So it's crazy because he literally says that when she informed me this morning. I mean, when does the CTO of a company tell you in the morning that they're leaving? I mean, I'm not sure if that is standard procedure. And you can see here that it says. I also want to share that Bob and Barrett have also decided to depart OpenAI Mira. Bob and Barrett made these decisions independently of each other and amicably. But the timing of Mira's decision making was such that it made sense to now do this all at once so that we can work together for a smooth handover to the next generation of leadership. I am extremely grateful to all of them for their contribution. I'm extremely grateful to all of them for their contributions. Being a leader at OpenAI is consuming. On one hand, it's a privilege to build AGI and be the fastest growing company that gets to put our advanced research into the hands of hundreds of millions of people. And on the other hand, it's relentless to lead a team through it. And they have gone above and beyond the call of duty for the company. Here is where we Talk about the new structure. It says that Mark is going to be our new SVP of Research and will now lead the Research Org in partnership with Jakob as Chief scientist. This has been our long term succession plan for Bob someday, although it's happening sooner than we thought. I couldn't be more excited that Mark.

Is stepping into the 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. So overall we have Jos Achiem being the new role as head of Alignment, working to ensure that the company works together. This is head of Mission alignment, not actual OpenAI alignment as in the model alignment. We've got Kevin and Srinivas continuing to lead the applied team. Matt Knight is going to be the cio. Matt Knight is going to be the Chief Information Security Officer having served in this capacity already. And then we've got Mark, Jacob and Kevin and Srinivas and Matt and Josh reporting to Sam Altman. And Sam Altman, interestingly enough here says that, you know, I have over the past year or so spent most of my time on the non technical part of our organization and I am now looking forward to spending most of my time on the technical product parts of the company. That's going to be kind of interesting to see how Sam Altman, you know, involves him decisions. Kind of sounds like founder mode if you ask me. Now it says here that leadership changes are a natural part of companies, especially companies that grow so quickly and are so demanding. I obviously won't pretend that it's natural for this to be, you know, all so abrupt, but we are not a normal company and I think the reasons Mira explained to me there is never a good time and anything not abrupt would have leaked and she wanted to do this while OpenAI was in an upswing. Makes sense. We can both talk about this more tomorrow during the all hands meeting. So I mean it's rather fascinating, but opening, I mean I guess it does make sense if you know, Mira Marathi was leaving. Of course there would have been leaks from the information, from Bloomberg, from Reuters. It's quite hard to keep that information under wraps. So I'm guessing her doing it while this stuff is deploying and other people are leaving. It does make sense. So I kind of find it fascinating that we have a scenario where Ilya Sutskeva is gone, Greg Brockman is noticeably gone and you know, arguably will come back at the end of the year, but there's no guarantee and now Mimo Marathi is currently gone. Leaving at the moment, just Sam Altman at the reins of the company. This has definitely been one of the most fascinating things I've ever seen. I mean, I honestly, I'm kind of speechless by this because I didn't expect, you know, I mean, I expected Ilya Sutskever to probably not be OpenAI, but Greg Brockman going on a sabbatical was honestly rather surprising.

Then Mir Moratti, that was like, whoa.

Okay, what's going on here?

So, I mean, what's next is like, Sam Altman gonna leave? I mean, I don't think that'll ever happen.

But, yeah, I mean, the real question is that I keep asking myself, why are people jumping ship just about as this company's about to achieve something great? I mean, I recently saw a tweet that literally said, why would key people leave an organization right before just it.

Was about to, you know, develop AGI?

This is kind of like NASA quitting months before the moon landing. Wouldn't you want to stick around and.

Be a part of it?

I mean, that is, you know, a really, really good question. It's not one, it's not two. It's like, you know, 75% of the leadership team left. There's a variety of reasons, but this really just doesn't make sense to me. Of course there's financial reasons, I guess you could say, but you might as well stick around to secure your place in history. Like this individual says here, you know, someone says, of course, you know, they have enough equity and prefer to spend their time on other stuff as they know what's coming with regards to the, you know, entire shakeup of society. But, of course, it doesn't make sense to me. It makes sense that you would stay there a bit longer to secure your place in history when it happens. And, I mean, that entirely makes sense. So, I don't know, maybe they think the company's going to implode and they want to move from now. I mean, honestly, it's anyone's best guess, but my best guess is that something probably isn't just right at OpenAI, because it's just if things aren't adding up, then there's clearly a missing part of the equation. Over time, I guess we will find out exactly what that is, but for now, just like the Q Star situation, it's mere speculation. Let me know what you guys are thinking down in the comment section below. I would love to know your thoughts and theories, and I'll see you guys in tomorrow's amazing video.