OpenAI co-founder and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever said today he’s quitting the company after almost 10 years in the job.

His decision to step down from the artificial intelligence company comes almost six months after he was said to have played a key role in the failed ouster of Chief Executive Sam Altman in November.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Sutskever (pictured) announced that he’s leaving the company to pursue a new project that remains under wraps for now. “I am excited for what comes next — a project that is very personally meaningful to me about which I will share details in due time,” he said.

Sutskever was reported to have been one of the chief instigators in the attempt to remove Altman from the company last November. About a week before Thanksgiving, Sutskever joined forces with OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati and approached members of the company’s previous board of directors to express his concerns about the CEO’s behavior. It was reported that he had become increasingly frustrated with Altman’s insistence on pushing the release of new artificial intelligence products at the expense of work on AI safety.

The old board quickly held a vote, resulting in Altman’s abrupt dismissal from the company, without informing anyone else on OpenAI’s staff. But the move quickly backfired, as OpenAI’s influential backers including Microsoft Corp. and other backers protested the move alongside the majority of the company’s employees. In a remarkable turn of events, Sutskever also changed his mind, joining other workers in a pledge to quit the company unless Altman was reinstated as CEO.

In less than a week, Altman was back in his old job, and most of the board members who had voted to remove him – including Sutskever – were out. Adam D’Angelo was the sole board member who backed Altman’s dismissal to retain his seat.

Following that turn of events, Sutskever’s departure does not come as a surprise. Business Insider reported in December that he had essentially been shut out of the company in the aftermath of the failed coup, though in a post on X, Altman paid tribute to his former colleague and “dear friend.”

Ilya and OpenAI are going to part ways. This is very sad to me; Ilya is easily one of the greatest minds of our generation, a guiding light of our field, and a dear friend. His brilliance and vision are well known; his warmth and compassion are less well known but no less…

— Sam Altman (@sama) May 14, 2024

Sutskever’s replacement as chief scientist is Jakub Pachocki, who had been serving as the company’s director of research. He joined OpenAI in 2017 as a research lead on OpenAI’s data team, which later built an AI system that was able to defeat some of the world’s best human players in the Dota 2 video game. Pachocki later became research lead at the company’s reasoning and science of deep learning organizations, before being promoted to its head of research.

“Jakub is also easily one of the greatest minds of our generation; I am thrilled he is taking the baton here,” Altman wrote on X. He has run many of our most important projects, and I am very confident he will lead us to make rapid and safe progress towards our mission of ensuring that AGI benefits everyone.”

OpenAI didn’t say if Pachocki will also take over as head of its Superalignment team, which was led by Sutskever. That team was announced in July, tasked with ways to steer, regulate and govern the development of theoretical “superintelligent” AI systems whose reasoning capabilities outperform humans.

Sutskever’s departure comes just a day after OpenAI announced its most advanced large language model so far. The GPT-4o LLM offers improved capabilities in text, video and audio understanding and can engage in more realistic, natural conversations with users.

Photo: TED/YouTube