The OpenAI Researchers Who Matter Now

Before we get to today’s newsletter, just a reminder that OpenAI will be holding its Dev Day event in San Francisco today. (This is just one of three developer-focused events the ChatGPT maker is hosting over the next two months, compared to the one-and-done approach from last year.)

For those hoping for GPT-5, don’t hold your breath. Romain Huet, OpenAI’s head of developer experience, said on X a few days ago that the event will be “focused on cool new API updates for developers,” with no plans for new models or ChatGPT features. I’m sure there will be plenty of interesting updates, though, especially around the new reasoning-focused o1-preview and o1-mini models released earlier this month.

On to today’s issue… 

Talk about déjà vu. Earlier this summer, I looked at the rising guard at OpenAI that would fill power vacuums following a spate of departures. A month and a half later, another unexpected shakeup in OpenAI’s vaunted research organization means we need to take another look at who matters now.

As OpenAI’s leaders have told us, the company is “nothing without its people.” Given that many departing leaders are jumping to existing or new OpenAI rivals, the ChatGPT maker has a lot of reasons to hold onto the key people who are left.

Here are the key researchers left at OpenAI, based on our conversations with former and current employees as well as competitors.