While Big Tech operators have been arriving, safety-focused leadership has been departing. The exodus tells a story the hiring announcements don’t.
Wave 1: The Superalignment Collapse (May 2024)
- Ilya Sutskever — Co-founder, Chief Scientist, nearly a decade
- Jan Leike — Superalignment Co-lead: “Reached breaking point”
- Superalignment Team: DISBANDED (20% compute promise never delivered)
Wave 2: The Leadership Shakeup (September 2024)
- Mira Murati — CTO, 6 years at OpenAI
- Bob McGrew — Chief Research Officer
- Barret Zoph — VP of Research, Post-training lead
Wave 3: The Continuing Drain (Ongoing)
- Hannah Wong — Chief Comms Officer (4 months after promotion)
- Tom Cunningham — Economics Researcher (“de facto advocacy arm”)
- Miles Brundage — Policy Research Head (“hard to publish on important topics”)
25+ senior departures. What remains is an organization optimized for shipping products and closing deals — not the careful work of ensuring AI remains beneficial.
This is part of a comprehensive analysis. Read the full analysis on The Business Engineer.
