Mira Moratti’s AI startup is making its first hires, including a former OpenAI CEO

Jonathan Lachman, The former head of special projects at OpenAI recently left to join a new artificial intelligence research lab founded by former OpenAI CEO Mira Moratti, according to two people familiar with the discussions. It is the most famous job Moratti has done since Leaving OpenAI in September last year To launch the much-hyped project, which focuses on exploring the so-called Artificial general intelligence.

Moratti has recruited about 10 researchers and engineers so far from competitors including OpenAI, Cattor AI, and Google DeepMind. Her startup is still in its early stages: it has neither a name nor a firm direction for the product, according to two people familiar with the company.

Moratti and Lachman did not immediately respond to requests for comment. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed Luckmann’s departure.

Moratti left OpenAI after less than a year CEO Sam Altman was abruptly fired by the company’s board of directors in late 2023. In the ensuing turmoil, the board briefly appointed Moratti, who then served as the company’s chief technology officer, as interim CEO.

The move was a blow to Altman. “I was like, ‘This feels really bad,'” He told podcaster Lex Friedman last March. He described Moratti’s promotion as the “trough” of the dramatic leadership crisis that briefly consumed OpenAI. Less than a week later more than 730 OpenAI employees threatened to quit, and Altman was reinstated as CEO.

Altman and Moratti continued to work closely together at OpenAI after the incident. “She did an amazing job over that weekend in a lot of chaos,” Altman told Friedman on the podcast. When Moratti stepped down from the company 10 months later, she said: She thanked Altman in her farewell letter.

“There is never a perfect time to move away from a place we cherish,” she wrote in a memo to OpenAI employees, which she later wrote Published on X. She added that she was “stepping away because I want to make time and space to do my own exploration.” A month later, Reuters reported That Moratti was trying to raise more than $100 million in funding for a mysterious new company, although that number has not yet been finalized.

OpenAI’s vice president of research, Barrett Zoff, and chief research officer, Bob McGraw, have both left About the same time Like Moratti. Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist, I followed suit In May of last year. He then founded Safe Superintelligence, a startup focused on AI safety. Within three months, Sutskever’s startup was off the ground Raised $1 billion. Anthropic, a major competitor to OpenAI, was founded by former OpenAI executives and has raised billions of dollars in funding, including $8 billion from Amazon.