OpenAI's Chief Research Officer has left

OpenAI's Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew and Vice President of Research Barret Zoph have left the company, hours after OpenAI CTO Mira Murati announced her departure.

CEO Sam Altman announced the two recent resignations along with plans for the leadership transition in a post on X on Wednesday evening.

“Mira, Bob and Barret made these decisions independently and by mutual consent,” he said. “But Mira's decision was timed so that it made sense to do this all at once now so that we can work together on a smooth transition to the next generation of leadership.”

Vice President of Research Mark Chen will be promoted to OpenAI's new senior vice president of research and will lead the company's research organization alongside Jakub Pachocki as chief scientist, Altman said.

Matt Knight, current head of security, will become OpenAI's chief information security officer. And Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil and VP of Engineering Srinivas Narayanan will continue to lead OpenAI's applications team, which is responsible for making the company's technology accessible to both enterprise and consumer customers.

Josh Achiam, a scientist, will take on a new role as mission alignment director. Altman says he will “work across the organization to make sure we get all the pieces and the culture right to execute the mission successfully.”

“Mark, Jakub, Kevin, Srinivas, Matt and Josh will report to me,” Altman added. “I've spent most of my time over the last year working on the non-technical parts of our organization; now I'm excited to spend most of my time working on the technical and product parts of the company.”

In his position, Altman tried to reassure employees and outsiders that the leadership changes were simply part of the normal course of business.

“Leadership changes are a natural part of companies, especially companies that are growing so fast and are so sophisticated,” he said. “I'm obviously not going to pretend it's a given that this change would happen so abruptly, but we're not a normal company and I think the reasons Mira gave me (there's never a good time, anything that isn't abrupt would leak out, and she wanted to do this while OpenAI was on the rise) make sense.”

In a post on X, McGrew simply said it was “time for [him] to take a break.”

“The last eight years of OpenAI have been a humbling and impressive journey,” he added. “The small nonprofit I joined in January 2017 has grown into the most important research and deployment company in the world… I have great confidence in [OpenAI’s] Guide.”

An OpenAI general meeting is planned for tomorrow.