OpenAI Chief Scientist and Co-Founder Ilya Sutskever Departs
OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever leaves the company to pursue a personally meaningful project. Jakub Pachocki steps in as the new chief scientist amid broader leadership changes.
Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and longtime chief scientist of OpenAI, leaves the company to pursue a new, personally meaningful project. CEO Sam Altman announces the departure, praising Sutskever as one of the greatest minds of their generation and emphasizing that OpenAI would not exist in its current form without his foundational contributions.
Jakub Pachocki, an OpenAI director of research who joined in 2017, replaces Sutskever as chief scientist. This leadership transition occurs alongside the resignation of Jan Leike from the Superalignment team, a group formed to govern theoretical superintelligent AI systems, with co-founder John Schulman reportedly taking over those oversight duties.
Sutskever's exit marks the end of a turbulent period that begins last November and follows the recent unveiling of OpenAI's new flagship generative AI model, GPT-4o. The Superalignment team now undergoes structural changes as OpenAI integrates its work more deeply across the company's broader research efforts to better achieve its safety objectives.