one year on
Ilya Sutskever departs OpenAI, cites confidence in leadership
Ilya Sutskever leaves OpenAI and says he is starting a new personally meaningful project.
Ilya Sutskever announced late Tuesday that he is leaving the company after nearly a decade. In a post on X, Sutskever said he is confident OpenAI will build safe and beneficial AGI under the leadership of @sama, @gdb, @miramurati and now, under the excellent research leadership of @merettm. He added that he is starting a new project that is “very personally meaningful to me” and will share details later.
On Hacker News, one commenter notes that both Karpathy and Sutskever are gone from OpenAI now. Several posters argued the company has shifted from a research-driven culture to a product-focused one, with some predicting that losing top scientists could hurt OpenAI’s ability to innovate long-term. Others countered that productization is the natural next step and that the company still has strong engineering talent.
He says he is excited for what comes next and will share details in due time.
Many commenters note the departure of top scientists, with some saying OpenAI is now run by marketing and product people, and expressing concern about the company's long-term research capabilities.
One year later — open only if you can handle spoilers
Sutskever went on to found Safe Superintelligence Inc., raising over $1 billion. OpenAI continued to release new models but faced ongoing leadership turbulence.
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