Greg Brockman speaks onstage at “OpenAI Co-founder on ChatGPT, DALL·E, and the Impact of Generative AI” during 2023 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 10, 2023 in Austin, Texas.
- OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman has returned to the startup after taking a sabbatical that began in August.
- Brockman's return comes more than a month after OpenAI closed its latest funding round at a valuation of $157 billion.
- The company has been plagued by executive departures and controversy around its upcoming conversion to a for-profit structure.
OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman has returned to the company as president, three months after announcing he would take a sabbatical "through end of year." On Tuesday, he posted on X that the "longest vacation" of his life was complete and that he was "back to building OpenAI."
Brockman's return comes more than a month after OpenAI closed its latest funding round at a valuation of $157 billion. In the time he was gone, an increasing number of executives departed and the company faced heightened controversy surrounding its upcoming conversion to a for-profit structure and its decision to shutter certain safety teams.
In late September, OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati announced she would depart the company after six and a half years. The same day, research chief Bob McGrew and Barret Zoph, a research vice president, said they were leaving. OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and former safety leader Jan Leike announced their departures in May, with Leike joining rival Anthropic. Co-founder John Schulman said in August that he was also leaving for Anthropic. And last week, Lilian Weng, OpenAI's vice president of research and safety, announced she would depart after seven years at the company.
Brockman has long been an ally of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who was abruptly fired and then swiftly reinstated a year ago. The company debuted in 2015 as a nonprofit with Brockman as chief technology officer and Altman as CEO.
Following Altman's temporary ouster, Brockman shared a post on X that he quit. He also wrote in a post at the time that both he and Altman were "shocked and saddened by what the board did today."
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