The former research director of Openai joined the startup of Mira Murati’s AI, learned Business Insider.
Bob McGrew was quietly added to the Lab Thinking Machines website as an advisor, alongside the former OpenAi researcher, Alec Radford.
The exact calendar of the moment when McGrew joined Thinking Machines Lab as an advisor is not clear, but an archived web page on the Wayback machine shows that McGrew was mentioned on the company’s website for the first time last month.
McGrew joins an increasing list of former OpenAi staff who have assumed roles in the new Murati company. The Machine Thinking laboratory lists 38 people on its website that make up its founding team.
An analysis of their history by BI revealed that exactly half – 19 members – worked before in Openai. Murati has hit the co-founder of Openai John Schulman as chief scientist, while the director of technology is Barret Zoph, co-creator of Chatgpt.
The startup of Murati came out of stealth in February when it revealed it to the world in an X post, declaring that its objective is to “advance AI by making it largely useful and understandable by solid foundations, open sciences and practical applications”. BI reported in February that the startup was aimed at raising $ 1 billion to an assessment of around $ 9 billion.
McGrew announced his departure from Openai in an X Post last September, one day after Murati said that she was leaving, noting that he shared the same message internally at the time. He described his eight years in the company as an “impressive journey” and said it was time for him to take a break after supporting the research team in the following two months.
The Thinking Machine, McGrew and Radford laboratory did not immediately respond to a request for comments from Business Insider.