OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, key executives part ways with ChatGPT maker

OpenAI's former chief technology officer Mira Murati on Wednesday announced her departure from the ChatGPT maker, before two other executives also bid farewell to artificial intelligence company.

Murati, a high-ranking executive at Sam Altman's tech firm, also served as its interim CEO for a few days during a period of turmoil last year, CNN reported.

Announcing the end of her time at OpenAI in a written statement, Murati said that after much reflection, she made the "difficult decision" of "stepping away (from OpenAI) because I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration."

Soon after Murati's announcement, Altman revealed that two other top executives were also on their way out of the company.

The decisions by Murati, as well as OpenAI’s Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew and another research leader, Barret Zoph, were made "independently of each other and amicably," Altman said in a note to employees he shared on social media.

Murati, McGrew, and Zoph mark the latest high-profile departures from the San Francisco-based tech firm after the company's co-founder, John Schulman, left in August to join its rival, Anthropic, which was founded in 2021 by a group of ex-OpenAI leaders.

Additionally, the company's president and co-founder, Greg Brockman said in August that he was "taking a sabbatical" through the end of the year.

Before him, another co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, who led a team focused on AI safety, left OpenAI in May to start his own AI company.