OpenAI hasn't been too quiet in recent days, facing continued executive turnover on the one hand, and frequent revelations that the company will be reorganizing on the other.

Several executives have left

On Wednesday, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati posted on X that she was leaving the company.Murati said the choice to leave was because she wanted to have her own time and space for her own research. She also said that her priority at the moment is to ensure a smooth transition of work.

Murati was briefly named interim CEO late last year when OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman was abruptly fired by the previous board.

And hours after Murati announced his departure, OpenAI Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew and Vice President of Research Barret Zoph also announced their departures.

McGrew joined OpenAI in 2017 as a member of the technical staff and was promoted to VP of research in 2018, before taking on the role of chief research officer.Zoph, meanwhile, led OpenAI's post-training team, which is responsible for training and refining the company's models before deploying them to products such as ChatGPT, OpenAI's APIs, and other internal research teams.

In response to the trio's departures, Altman wrote on X: “Mira, Bob, and Barret made these decisions independently of each other and amicably, but the timing of Mira’s decision was such that it made sense to now do this all at once, so that we can work together for a smooth handover to the next generation of leadership. ”

In recent months, a number of OpenAI executives and senior employees have chosen to leave.

OpenAI's chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, and head of security, Jan Leike, both announced their departures in May, and co-founder John Schulman announced last month that he was leaving the company to join rival Anthropic, while Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president, is on an extended leave of absence, expected to last until the end of the year. Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI, is on an extended leave of absence that is expected to last until year-end.

Altman responded to the continued executive turnover on X, saying, “Leadership changes are a natural part of companies, especially companies that grow so quickly and are so demanding. I obviously won’t pretend it’s natural for this one to be so abrupt, but we are not a normal company.”

OpenAI to turn for-profit organization?

The announcement of the departure of the three members mentioned above comes just as media outlets are breaking the news that OpenAI may be moving from a nonprofit to a for-profit organization.

According to the report, people familiar with the matter have revealed that OpenAI is working on a plan to reorganize its core business into a for-profit company that would no longer be controlled by its nonprofit board of directors.The OpenAI nonprofit organization would continue to exist and hold a minority stake in the reorganized for-profit company.

The move will make the company more attractive to investors, but could also have implications for the company's ability to manage AI risk in its new governance structure.

In 2019, OpenAI had restructured its organization once in order to expand its funding sources, changing from a simple nonprofit to two organizations - the for-profit OpenAI LP and the original nonprofit OpenAI Inc.

Moreover, OpenAI LP devised a “capped-profit” structure. Under this structure, the limited partners' return on investment is capped, and any excess return on investment is returned to the original nonprofit organization, OpenAI Inc. To this day, OpenAI LP remains a “profit-capped” company and is regulated by the non-profit OpenAI Inc.

As OpenAI seeks to raise capital from a wider range of investors, there is a desire to move to a more traditional and simpler for-profit structure, preferably without a cap on profits.

The source also added that Sam Altman will get his first stake in the for-profit company. Altman, who has never taken an equity stake in the company in keeping with its nonprofit roots, has repeatedly emphasized that OpenAI's goal is to benefit society and that he has the money to do so.

Earlier this month it was announced that OpenAI was in the midst of its latest funding round and was valued at $150 billion. It is understood that Microsoft, which has invested in OpenAI, as well as venture capital firms Thrive Capital and Khosla Ventures, will continue to participate in OpenAI's new funding round. In addition, new investors such as NVIDIA and Apple also plan to participate in the investment.