Matt WolfeFutureTools.io · Founder of Future Tools | Host of Next Wave Podcast

OpenAI’s "Double Agent" Drama Explained

19 Jan 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:15

Short narrated YouTube explainer (by Matt Wolfe) recounting alleged internal drama between OpenAI and the new startup Thinking Machines: Mira Murati, formerly OpenAI CTO, left to found Thinking Machines; Thinking Machines hired Barrett Zoff (a former OpenAI employee) as CTO; Zoff was reportedly fired from Thinking Machines for "unethical conduct"—accused of passing confidential information to competitors—and was rehired by OpenAI the same day. The narrator emphasizes that these claims are based on unnamed sources and frames the story as rumor/speculation and Silicon Valley-style drama.

Chapters

So if you're not familiar with Thinking Machines, the CEO and founder is Mira Murati. Now, Mira Murati used to be CTO over at OpenAI. She actually left OpenAI and started this new company, Thinking Machines. Now, the CTO of Thinking Machines was someone named Barrett Zoff. Barrett was somebody that Thinking Machines essentially poached away from OpenAI. When she went and started this company, he followed. Well, this week, Thinking Machines basically fired him for unethical conduct. On the same day that he was fired for that unethical conduct, he was rehired by OpenAI. Well, a source told Wire that Zof here was passing confidential company information to competitors. OpenAI announced that ZOF was returning in an internal memo on X saying the company doesn't share Marathi's concerns. What most of us are gathering from this was he was like a double agent for thinking machines and OpenAI. Like, he went over to Thinking Machines to sort of keep an eye on what they were doing and fe feed that information to Open AI. Now, this is all just rumor and speculation. The source isn't actually known, but this feels right out of like a crazy drama movie. And oftentimes what's happening in Silicon Valley feels like that. But this is one of those stories that's just kind of wild.