Jonathan Lachman, OpenAI’s former head of special projects, recently left to join a new artificial intelligence research lab founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, according to two people familiar with the matter. discussion. This is the most high-profile hire Murati has ever made left OpenAI in September last year to start the much-hyped venture, which is focused on the exploration of the so-called artificial general intelligence.

Murati hired about 10 researchers and engineers in total away from competitors including OpenAI, Character AI, and Google DeepMind. His startup is still in its early stages—it doesn’t have a name, nor a solid product direction, according to two people familiar with the company.

Murati and Lachman did not immediately respond to requests for comment. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed Lachman’s departure.

Murati left OpenAI less than a year later CEO Sam Altman was suddenly fired to the company’s board of directors in late 2023. In the chaos that followed, the board appointed Murati, who served as the company’s chief technology officer, as interim CEO.

The move was a blow to Altman. “I was like, that feels bad,” he told podcaster Lex Fridman in March. He described Murati’s promotion as “the lowest point” in the severe leadership crisis that has gripped OpenAI. Less than a week later more than Threatened by 730 OpenAI employees to quit, Altman was brought back as CEO.

Altman and Murati continued to work closely with OpenAI after the incident. “He did a great job that weekend in a lot of chaos,” Altman told Fridman on the podcast. When Murati resigned from the company 10 months ago, he thanked Altman in his farewell letter.

“There is never an ideal time to walk away from a place one loves,” he wrote in a memo to OpenAI employees, which he later posted by X. He added that he “moved away because I wanted to create the time and space to do my own exploration.” A month later, Reuters reported that Murati is trying to raise more than $100 million to fund a mysterious new company, though that number hasn’t been finalized.

OpenAI’s vice president of research, Barret Zoph, and chief research officer, Bob McGrew, have both left at the same time said Murati. Ilya Sutskever, an OpenAI cofounder and chief scientist, FOLLOWS in May last year. He went on to found Safe Superintelligence, a startup focused on AI safety. Within three months, the start of Sutskever raised $1 billion. Anthropic, a major OpenAI competitor, was also founded by former OpenAI executives and has raised billions of dollars in funding, including $8 billion from Amazon.