OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever is leaving the company

(Bloomberg) — OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever is leaving the artificial intelligence giant and will be replaced by research director Jakub Pachocki.

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Sutskever, part of the company’s founding team, was also a key player in the brief but dramatic firing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in November.

“After nearly a decade, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI,” wrote Sutskever. “The company’s trajectory has been nothing short of miraculous.”

After founding OpenAI in 2015, Sutskever served as director of research; he was recruited to join the company by Elon Musk. He was later one of several board members who decided to fire Altman. But soon after, Sutskever said he regretted the decision.

After Altman returned to the company in late November, Sutskever said in a blog post that he would not return to his previous role as a board member, but that the company was “discussing how he could continue his work at OpenAI.”

Sutskever is well known in the field of AI, dating back to his research in neural networks at the University of Toronto, and continuing at Google, where he worked in the company’s Google Brain lab.

OpenAI did not immediately return a request for comment.

In a post on X, Altman wrote, “Ilya is easily one of the greatest minds of our generation, a guide in our field, and a dear friend.”

On X, Sutskever posted that he is working on an as-yet-unnamed project that is “very personally meaningful” to him.

The company’s new chief scientist, Pachocki has worked at OpenAI since 2017. He had previously been the startup’s research director.

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