Jonathan Lachman, the previous head of special projects at OpenAI, recently left for a new artificial intelligence research lab founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, according to two people familiar with the discussions. It is the most high-profile hire Murati has made since leaving OpenAI in September last year to start a much-hyped venture, which focuses on the exploration of the so-called artificial general intelligence. away from competitors including OpenAI, Character AI, and Google DeepMind. The startup is still in its infancy—it doesn’t have a name, or a firm 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. chief technology officer, as interim CEO. The move was a blow to Altman. “I was like, that feels bad,” podcaster Lex Fridman said last March. He described Murati’s promotion as the “lowest point” of a dramatic leadership crisis that has briefly used OpenAI. Less than a week later and after more than 730 OpenAI employees threatened to quit, Altman was reinstated as CEO. Altman and Murati continued to work together on OpenAI after the incident. “He did a great job during that weekend with the chaos,” Altman told Fridman on the podcast. When Murati resigned from the company 10 months later, he thanked Altman in his farewell letter. He added that he “came home because I wanted to make time and space for my own exploration.” A month later, Reuters reported that Murati was trying to raise more than $100 million to fund the mysterious new company, though the numbers have not been finalized. OpenAI’s vice president of research, Barret Zoph, and head of research, Bob McGrew, both left during Murati’s tenure. Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s founder and chief scientist, followed suit in May last year. He later found Aman Superintelligence, a startup focused on AI safety. In three months, Sutskever’s startup 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.
