OpenAI executive says the startup has a ‘great bench’ after CTO’s abrupt departure

Kevin Weil

The hundreds of attendees at Ray Summit, an AI conference in San Francisco, were originally hoping to hear from Mira Murati, the chief technology officer of OpenAI, on Wednesday.

But over the weekend, there was a last-minute change of schedule, with Murati replaced by the startup’s chief product officer, Kevin Weil.

The reason: Just days before, Murati had abruptly left OpenAI.

Weil’s talk — a fireside chat with Anyscale cofounder Robert Nishihara, whose company hosted the conference — largely played it safe, with no mention of Murati’s exit, or the $6.6 billion funding round that OpenAI announced minutes before he went on stage.

In a brief interview with B-17 immediately afterwards, Weil praised Murati while downplaying the impact of her departure.

“Mira is amazing. She’s a huge part of why OpenAI is in the position that we’re in,” he said. “I’ve really enjoyed working with her. At the same time, we have a great bench.”

Weil, a former Instagram executive, highlighted Mark Chen as an example of the talent still around at OpenAI. Chen is the startup’s senior vice president of research.

“He and I actually worked together like 20 years ago at a company you’ve probably never heard of when we were both just out of grad school,” Weil said. “So I’m really excited to partner with him and I’m really optimistic about what we’re building.”

Chen joined the organization in October 2018, and previously worked at Integral Technology LLC, Tech Square Trading, and Jane Street after studying at MIT, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Murati has yet to address specific reasons for her departure. In a message to OpenAI employees that she also posted on X, she wrote: “I’m stepping away because I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration.”

Her departure came a few days before OpenAI’s massive new funding round. It also coincides with a reported plan to reorganize the startup to shed its non-profit structure, though CEO Sam Altman has said her departure was unrelated. Asked if he knew of any link, Weil also gave a flat “no.”

It’s not yet clear what Murati’s next act will be, and Weil said he didn’t know what her plans were. Whatever it is, Silicon Valley is hungry to get in on the action: On Monday, B-17 reported that venture capital investors are rushing to try to meet with her in the expectation that she will launch a new company.

She’s one of a wave of high-profile exits from OpenAI over the last few months, including cofounder Ilya Sutskever, superalignment co-leader Jan Leike, and cofounder John Schulman. Vice president of research Barret Zoph and chief research officer Bob McGrew also left on the same day as Murati.

Asked if he was worried about the exodus, Weil said: “We have a really strong group of people. When you look at — I mean, people like Bob and Mira, they were at the company six-and-a-half years in Mira’s case, eight years in Bob’s case. I think that alone says something about their commitment to OpenAI, and the depth of work that they’ve done. “

He added: “So we’ve got an awesome team and we’re going to keep shipping. We’ve got a lot of fun stuff coming.”