Jonathan Lachman, the previous head of special projects at OpenAI, recently left to join a new artificial intelligence research lab founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Muratti, according to two people familiar with the discussions. This is the most high-profile appointment made by Murati to date Left OpenAI in September last year To launch the much-hyped venture, which focuses on the discovery of the so-called artificial general intelligence,
Murati has attracted about 10 researchers and engineers in total so far from competitors including OpenAI, Character AI and Google DeepMind. According to two people familiar with the company, their startup is still in its early stages — it has neither a name, nor any concrete product direction.
Murati and Lachman did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for OpenAI confirmed Lachman's departure.
Muratti leaves OpenAI after less than a year CEO Sam Altman was suddenly fired by the company's board of directors at the end of 2023. In the turmoil that followed, the board appointed Muratti, who at the time served as the company's chief technology officer, as interim CEO.
The move was a blow to Altman. “I was like, this feels really bad,” he told podcaster Lex Friedman last MarchHe described Muratti's promotion as “the low point” of the dramatic leadership crisis that has engulfed OpenAI for some time. less than a week later and later more than this After 730 OpenAI employees threatened to walk off the job, Altman was reinstated as CEO.
Altman and Muratti continued to work together at OpenAI after the incident. “He did a great job in a lot of chaos during that weekend,” Altman told Friedman on the podcast. When Murati resigned from the company after 10 months, he thanked Altman in his farewell letter,
“There is never an ideal time to move away from a place one loves,” he wrote in a note to OpenAI employees. Posted on xShe said she was “stepping away because I want to make time and space to do my own research.” After a month, Reuters reported Murati was trying to raise more than $100 million to finance a mysterious new company, although that figure has not been finalized.
OpenAI's vice president of research, Barrett Zoff, and chief research officer, Bob McGrew, both left. around the same time As Murati. Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and chief scientist of OpenAI, followed suit In May last year. He founded Safe Superintelligence, a startup focused on AI security. Sutskever's startup started within three months raised 1 billion dollarsAnthropic, a major OpenAI competitor, was also founded by former OpenAI executives and has raised billions of dollars in funding, including $8 billion from Amazon.