Once Silicon Valley’s most famous AI innovator, Openai is working on the unprecedented, talented book of Exodus. In February 2025, Robotics Company CEO Brett Adcock cut off Openai’s partnership and declared that advances in AI within the company had been eliminated.
This follows the famous cascade of exits. Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati resigned in September 2024 to pursue “personal exploration.” work. “”
These deviations led to previous safety resignations to Jan Reike and Ilya Satsukeiber, only at the helm of the three original founders.
Mission Drift and Leadership Disruption: A Toxic Cocktail
The Exodus stems from Openai’s pivot, from its non-commercial safety first origins to offensive commercialization under CEO Sam Altman. Employees report eroding faith in leadership that has been exacerbated by Altman’s 2023 expulsion and revival, exposing deep governance fractures.
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Safety teams like the SuperAlignment Group are covered by controlling superhuman AI, but disbanded in May 2024, with resources being diverted to launch products such as SORA and GPT-4O. Critics prioritize investor returns over ethical AI, which is projected to reach $14 billion by 2026.
Sutskever, who contributed to the development of GPT and Dall-E, resigned in May 2024 after clashing with Altman during the 2023 leadership crisis. His departure post for X stated, “Nearly ten years later, I decided to leave… I’m sure I’ll build a safe AGI.” He later co-founded Safe Superintelligence Inc., focusing solely on AI safety.
Jan Leike – Leading the Super Alignment Team
Leike’s sudden resignation in May 2024 – simply “I resigned” – an exposed internal cleavage. He later criticized Openai, saying, “a safety culture where you take the back seat on shiny products.” His team has only been allocated 20% of their computing resources, but they broke up a few weeks later.
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John Schulman – Co-Founder, Alignment Lead
Schulman, the architect of ChatGpt’s RLHF framework, joined humanity in August 2024. Despite claiming that his exit is “individual”, insiders pointed to their complaints about Openai’s study cuts. His farewell post stated, “Company leaders have been very committed to investing in this area.”
Mira Murati – Chief Technology Officer
Murati, the face of Openai’s Sora and Dall-E launch, resigned in September 2024, saying he “want time to explore himself.” Her exit followed internal objections to the allocation of resources to commercial projects.
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Daniel Kokotajiro – Governance Researcher
Kokotajlo quit in May 2024, rejecting a non-discrimination agreement, saying, “I lost faith in Openai’s leadership… so I quit.” He later leaked a document claiming that Altman withheld critical AGI safety data.
Helen Toner & Tasha McCauley – Former Board Member
Both resigned in late 2023, accusing Altman of cultivating a “toxic culture of lies” and withholding details of launching ChatGpt. Toner has made it clear that the board lacks basic safety monitoring and calls Openai’s governance “dangerously opaque.”
Elon Musk – Co-Founder
Musk left Openai’s board of directors in 2018 and later sued Altman to “betray humanity” via Microsoft partnership. His 2025 lawsuit alleges Openai’s capped commercial model prioritizes commercial interests and violates the founding charter.
Finance free fall and investors’ pressure
Openai’s finances reveal laws that balance the volatile. The $5 billion loss on $3.7 billion in revenue in 2024 is driven by a $700,000 ChatGPT cost daily. Training costs reach $3 billion a year and are excluded from profit calculations to attract investors. A cumulative loss of $44 billion predicted by 2028 means Altman’s stock-heavy compensation model (Software Engineers has earned a median salary of $810,000, but sustainable.
The path ahead: profits and principles
As Openai moves to a for-profit organization, critics have warned that the original mission is irreparable. The transition of talent to rivals like Anthropic and Safe Superintelligence Inc. It highlights industry skepticism. Altman’s new Security Committee, led by himself, faces accusations of performative governance. With Musk’s litigation progress and employee trust erosion, Openai’s ability to harmonize innovation with ethics remains extremely uncertain.
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Sagar Sharma
I happen to be a software engineer who loves to test computers and sometimes crashes. He can be found reading literature, cartoons, or watered plants, while reviving his crashed system. View the full profile
