January 16th, according to TechCrunch, before OpenAI Director Mira MulatiMira MuratiThe founding company Thinking Machines Lab, the co-founder of the founding company, has left and will return to OpenAI, and several core members have left。
Murati announced on Wednesday, local time, in social media, that Barret Zoph, the co-founder and chief technical officer of the company, had left his post and was replaced by Soumith Chintala。
ON X, SHE STATED THAT CHINTARA HAD BEEN WORKING IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FOR MORE THAN A DECADE AND WAS AN IMPORTANT TECHNICAL PILLAR FOR THE TEAM。
However, the Mourati statement did not mention other separations. Just 58 minutes after her release, OpenAI Application CEO Fidji Simo announced on platform X that Zov, Luke Metz and Sam Schoenholz would return to OpenAI。
Metz was a co-founder of the Brain Machine Laboratory, and all three served in OpenAI for many years。
According to publicly available information, Zov was Vice-President of OpenAI Research and earlier was a research scientist in Google. After leaving OpenAI CTO in September 2024, Mulati joined Zov and Metz in creating the Brain Machine Laboratory and became CEO。
Since its inception, the company has been financing a large amount: in July 2024, it completed $2 billion in seed-wheel financing, valued at $12 billion, with investments from the Anderson Holowitz Fund, Accel, Weida, AMD and Jane Street Capital。
Wireline reported that Zov's break-up with the Brain Machine Laboratory was not pleasant. The fact that Mourati left his post in a public statement was also seen as a sign of tension between the parties。
ALTHOUGH THE FLOW OF TALENT BETWEEN SILICON VALLEY AI GIANTS HAS BECOME THE NORM, IT IS RARE FOR A START-UP COMPANY THAT HAS BEEN IN EXISTENCE FOR LESS THAN A YEAR TO RUN OUT OF A GROUP OF CO-FOUNDERS。
The Think Machine Laboratory had previously assembled star research teams from OpenAI, Meta and Mistral AI, while CTO, who had separated from its co-founders, was widely regarded as a major blow to corporate strategy。
In addition to Zoff and Metz, another co-founder of the company, Andrew Tulloch, jumped to Meta in October 2024。