OpenAI co-founder John Schulman's brief stint at Anthropic comes to an end

John Schulman, who helped create ChatGPT's underlying technology at OpenAI, has left Anthropic after just five months with the company.

As one of OpenAI's co-founders, he played a key role in developing the technology that powers ChatGPT. Last August, he made headlines by joining competitor Anthropic, where he planned to focus on AI safety and alignment with human values. Schulman hasn't shared his reasons for the quick departure. Anthropic kept their statement brief, saying only that he decided to "pursue new opportunities."

Update:

Schulman expresses his appreciation for the "stimulating research environment and the kind and talented people" at Anthropic, but says he's chosen an "extremely compelling" alternative opportunity, with more details to follow in the coming weeks.

Fortune reports that Schulman is joining a new AI venture led by Mira Murati, who served as OpenAI's CTO until September 2024. Murati played a key role in developing ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Sora before starting her own company. Murati's startup is reportedly already in talks with venture capital firms to raise more than $100 million for developing proprietary AI models.

Murati and Schulman join a growing list of former OpenAI executives charting new paths in the AI industry, including Ilya Sutskever, Andrej Karpathy, and Jan Leike.