Here’s what OpenAI employees say about the company’s future

• OpenAI plans to restructure into a for-profit company, moving away from nonprofit board oversight.
• Key executives have also left in recent months, citing concerns about OpenAI’s future.
• Here’s what some former and current employees are saying about the latest changes.

After a blistering week for OpenAI, former and current employees weigh in on the company’s path forward.

OpenAI’s chief technology officer, Mira Murati, and top researchers, Barret Zoph and Bob McGrew, announced their resignations on Wednesday last week. The next day, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed reports that the company is considering restructuring as a for-profit company and leaving its nonprofit origins behind.

OpenAI has so far been largely silent about restructuring. It hasn’t issued an official statement, but Altman said the company was thinking about it as part of “what it takes to get to our next stage,” at a panel discussion at Italy’s Tech Week last Thursday. The move to a for-profit benefits company coincides with OpenAI’s effort to raise billions in new investment.

Outsiders are wondering what these developments mean about the inner workings of OpenAI, especially since other high-profile executives and researchers have recently left the company.

According to some of the departing OpenAI employees, there is internal concern that the move to a for-profit company confirms what they already suspected: Altman is prioritizing profit over safety.

OpenAI’s mission from the beginning has been to develop artificial general intelligence—a still-theoretical version of AI that can reason like humans—in a way that is safe and benefits all of humanity. The company’s commitment to the second half of that mission has been a point of contention in recent years.

When OpenAI’s security lead, Jan Leike, announced his resignation in May, he said on X that he thought it would be “the best place in the world to do this research.” By the time he left, however, he said he had reached a “breaking point” with OpenAI’s leadership over the company’s core priorities.

Gretchen Krueger, a former policy researcher at OpenAI, said the company’s nonprofit governance structure and profit cap were part of the reason she joined in 2019 — the year OpenAI added a for-profit arm. “It feels like a step in the wrong direction when we need more steps in the right direction,” she told X on Sunday.

She said OpenAI’s attempt to transition into a public benefit corporation — a for-profit company intended to generate social good — is not enough. As one of the largest developers of general artificial intelligence, OpenAI needs “stronger mission blocks,” she wrote.

However, current employees largely tow the company line, at least publicly.

Noam Brown, a researcher at OpenAI, disagrees that the company has lost its focus on research. “Those of us at @OpenAI who work at o1 find it strange to hear outsiders claim that OpenAI has deprioritized research. I promise you all, it’s the opposite,” he wrote on X on Friday.

Earlier this month, OpenAI released o1, a new set of AI models it says are “designed to spend more time thinking before responding.”

Brown, like other current employees, did not consider the near-simultaneous departures of Murati, Zoph and McGrew, other than to note that he would be missed.

Mark Chen, senior vice president of research at OpenAI, reaffirmed his commitment to the company. “I truly believe that OpenAI is the best place to work on AI, and I’ve been through enough ups and downs to know that it’s never wise to bet against us,” he wrote on X on Wednesday.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.