OpenAI's Chief Scientist and Co-Founder Is Leaving the Company

OpenAI's co-founder and Chief Scientist, Ilya Sutskever, is leaving the company to work on "something personally meaningful," wrote CEO Sam Altman in a post on X. "This is very sad to me; Ilya is easily one of the greatest minds of our generation, a guiding light of our field, and a dear friend. [...] I am forever grateful for what he did here and committed to finishing the mission we started together." He will be replaced by OpenAI researcher Jakub Pachocki. Here's Altman's full X post announcing the departure: Ilya and OpenAI are going to part ways. This is very sad to me; Ilya is easily one of the greatest minds of our generation, a guiding light of our field, and a dear friend. His brilliance and vision are well known; his warmth and compassion are less well known but no less important.

OpenAI would not be what it is without him. Although he has something personally meaningful he is going to go work on, I am forever grateful for what he did here and committed to finishing the mission we started together. I am happy that for so long I got to be close to such genuinely remarkable genius, and someone so focused on getting to the best future for humanity.

Jakub is going to be our new Chief Scientist. Jakub is also easily one of the greatest minds of our generation; I am thrilled he is taking the baton here. He has run many of our most important projects, and I am very confident he will lead us to make rapid and safe progress towards our mission of ensuring that AGI benefits everyone. The New York Times notes that Ilya joined three other board members to force out Altman in a chaotic weekend last November. Ultimately, Altman returned as CEO five days later. Ilya said he regretted the move.

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