One of OpenAI’s co-founders, John Schulman, has joined a rival OpenAI startup, Anthropic.
Greg Brockman Takes Extended Leave
After nine years at the company, OpenAI president Greg Brockman has confirmed that. He will take a lengthy leave of absence through the end of the year to “relax and recharge.”
Peter Deng Exits OpenAI
The company confirmed that Peter Deng, a product manager who joined OpenAI last year after leading products at Meta, Uber, and Airtable, also left some time ago. The Information earlier reported Brockman’s and Deng’s departures.
OpenAI’s Statement on Schulman’s Departure
A spokesperson shared this statement about Schulman: “We’re grateful for John’s contributions as a founding team member at OpenAI and his dedicated efforts in advancing alignment research. His passion and hard work have established a strong foundation to inspire and support future innovations at OpenAI and the broader field.”
Schulman’s Focus on AI Alignment
Schulman posted about the decision on X today, saying that it stemmed from a desire to deepen his focus on AI alignment — the science of ensuring AI behaves as intended — and engage in more hands-on technical work.
Schulman’s New Role at Anthropic
“I’ve decided to pursue this goal at Anthropic, where I believe I can gain new perspectives and do research alongside people deeply engaged with the topics I’m most interested in,” Schulman said. “I am confident that OpenAI and the teams I was part of will continue to thrive without me.”
Contributions to OpenAI
Schulman’s involvement with OpenAI began shortly after he completed a PhD in electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley. He led reinforcement training org, which fine-tunes generative AI models to follow human instructions, and played a pivotal role in creating the AI-powered chatbot platform ChatGPT.
OpenAI Leading Alignment Science Efforts
Following the departure of AI safety researcher Jan Leike (who also now works at Anthropic), Schulman became the head of OpenAI’s alignment science efforts, also known as the “post-training” team.
OpenAI Personal Decision to Leave
Despite the controversies swirling around, particularly regarding the company’s approach to and treatment of AI safety research, Schulman said that. He wasn’t leaving OpenAI due to a lack of support.
<strong>OpenAI Future Focus
“Company leaders have been very committed to investment in [alignment research],” Schulman said. “My decision is personal, based on how I want to focus my efforts in the next career phase.”
Remaining Founders at OpenAI</strong>
With Schulman’s departure, only three of OpenAI’s 11 founders remain. CEO Sam Altman, Brockman, and Wojciech Zaremba are the leaders of language and code generation.
Altman’s Farewell to Schulman
“Thank you for everything you’ve done for OpenAI!” wrote Altman in a post on X. You are a brilliant researcher, a deep thinker about products and society, and, most of all, a great friend to all of us. We will miss you tremendously and make you proud of this place.”
Update on Departures
This story was originally published at 5:38 p.m. and was updated to reflect OpenAI’s confirmation of Brockman’s and Deng’s departures.
