Former OpenAI Employees Launch Their Own Startups

A growing number of former OpenAI employees are reportedly launching startups of their own.

Like OpenAI, each of the startups is focused on the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, Bloomberg reported Thursday (June 5).

A startup founded by former OpenAI vice president of research for post-training, Liam Fedus, and former Google DeepMind research scientist Ekin Dogus Cubuk is called Periodic Labs and is focused on AI for material science, according to the report.

Another startup is being formed by former OpenAI employees Rhythm Garg, Linden Li and Yash Patil and is focused on reinforcement learning, in which AI systems learn to make decisions through trial and error, the report said.

Former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati formed a startup called Thinking Machines Lab, which has a staff that includes more than a dozen former employees of OpenAI, per the report.

In addition, former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever has raised billions of dollars for an AI research lab, according to the report.

AI startups xAI and Anthropic were also founded by people with early ties to xAI, per the report.

When Murati announced the formation of Thinking Machine Labs in February, she said in a post on X that the company will help people adapt AI systems to meet their specific needs, develop foundations to build more capable AI systems, and foster a culture of open science aimed at helping the whole field understand and improve AI systems.

“Our goal is simple, advance AI by making it broadly useful and understandable through solid foundations, open science and practical applications,” Murai wrote in the post.

When Sutskever launched his AI company in June 2024, the firm, Safe Superintelligence, said it will “approach safety and capabilities in tandem, as technical problems to be solved through revolutionary engineering and scientific breakthroughs.”

It was reported in April that Safe Superintelligence raised $6 billion in new funding in a round that valued the company at $32 billion, a more than sixfold increase from the previous time it raised money.

That funding round was reported to be the latest sign for continued investor enthusiasm in AI companies.