OpenAI Loses Another Key Figure! Chief Futurist to Depart at Month's End After Over 9 Years, Once Confronted Musk

Joshua Achiam, OpenAI's Chief Futurist, announced on Wednesday (May 8) via social media that he will officially leave the company on May 24, concluding his tenure of over nine years at OpenAI.

According to foreign media reports, Achiam stated that his departure has no special reason—"it's just a thought that's been lingering in my mind for a long time, and now the timing feels right."

He emphasized that stepping outside the walls of a cutting-edge research lab does not mean he will stop contributing to the mission of advancing safe AGI.

Achiam joined OpenAI in 2017 as an intern and has served the company for over nine years. In February of this year, the nonprofit mission advancement team he previously led was disbanded, after which he transitioned to the role of Chief Futurist. This position focused on assessing the potential risks and benefits brought about by the rise of AI, although his tenure lasted less than six months.

During his time in this role, he closely collaborated with Chris Lehane, OpenAI's Head of Global Affairs, to promote government regulatory policies aligned with OpenAI's core mission: "ensuring that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity."

In his farewell message, Achiam reflected that when he first joined OpenAI, computers could neither speak nor think. Now, as a married man with a two-year-old son, computers have advanced to the point of solving cutting-edge scientific challenges. "These past ten years have felt like centuries of transformation compressed into a single decade."

He remains highly optimistic about the future, believing humanity will eventually reach a world of peace, unprecedented prosperity, and infinite possibilities. He even predicts that one day, the challenge of "meeting everyone's basic needs" will be seen as embarrassingly low in ambition.

He concluded his message with the resolute phrase: "For safe AGI."

Achiam previously served as a witness in the lawsuit between Tesla founder Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. In court, he revealed that Musk had once publicly insulted him as a "stupid donkey" during a heated argument over AI safety.

After the trial, several colleagues, including current Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, expressed gratitude to Achiam and gifted him a golden statue depicting a "stupid donkey," with the inscription on the base reading: "Always be a stupid donkey who stands up for safety."

OpenAI has not yet announced whether anyone will succeed Achiam. Meanwhile, the company's post-money valuation has reached $852 billion, and it is actively preparing for an IPO, with expectations that its valuation could exceed $1 trillion upon listing.

Previously, Altman indicated that OpenAI could go public as early as 2027.

OpenAI's safety organization has undergone multiple restructurings in recent years. In July 2023, OpenAI announced the formation of the Superalignment team, co-led by Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, aiming to solve the core technical challenges of superintelligence alignment within four years.

Less than a year later, the team was disbanded. Leike left OpenAI in 2024 to join Anthropic.

In September 2024, then-CTO Mira Murati announced her departure, and OpenAI established the Mission Alignment team, led by Achiam. In February 2025, this team was also disbanded, and OpenAI simultaneously announced Achiam's reassignment to Chief Futurist. Today, Achiam has announced his departure.

In 2024, policy research lead Miles Brundage and AI model risk capability lead Steven Adler both left OpenAI. The two co-founded a nonprofit organization calling on major AI labs to strictly implement high safety standards.

Andrea Vallone, who researched how ChatGPT should interact with users experiencing psychological or emotional distress, left in late 2025 and joined Leike's team at Anthropic.