John Schulman, one of the co-founders of OpenAI, has left the artificial intelligence company to join rival Anthropic. Schulman announced his decision on the social media platform X late Monday, stating his desire to focus on AI alignment and return to hands-on technical work. “This choice stems from my desire to deepen my focus on AI alignment, and to start a new chapter of my career where I can return to hands-on technical work,” Schulman wrote in his post.
The announcement of Schulman’s departure is not the only significant change at OpenAI. Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s President and another co-founder, revealed in a separate post on X that he will be taking a sabbatical until the end of the year. The Information first reported these developments and also noted that Peter Deng, a product manager who joined OpenAI last year, has exited the company.
These moves come as OpenAI undergoes substantial personnel shifts. In July, the company’s AI safety leader, Aleksander Madry, was reassigned to a different role. Earlier in the year, Ilya Sutskever, another co-founder and chief scientist, left the company in May. Andrej Karpathy, also a founding member, departed in February and subsequently launched an AI-integrated education platform in July. Adding to the company’s challenges, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who was among the original founders of OpenAI and left three years later, revived his lawsuit against the firm and its CEO, Sam Altman, on Monday. Musk alleges that OpenAI has prioritized profits and commercial interests over the public good.
These changes mark a period of significant transition for OpenAI as it navigates through leadership alterations and legal disputes while continuing its mission to advance artificial intelligence technology.
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