Move over, PayPal mafia: There’s a new tech mafia in Silicon Valley. As the startup behind ChatGPT, OpenAI is arguably the biggest AI player in town. The company is reportedly now in talks to finalize a $100 billion deal, which puts the company at over $850 billion.
Many employees have come and gone since the company was launched ten years ago, while others have started their own. Among these, some have become top competitors (like Anthropic), while others, just because of the interest of investors, have managed to raise billions without launching a product (see, Thinking Machine Labs).
In January, Alisa Rosenthal, OpenAI’s first sales lead, talked a little about this growing network. He, like other OpenAI students who did not become founders, decided to become an investor and said he would join the network of former OpenAI founders to monitor the flow of deals. We know that Peter Deng, former head of consumer products for OpenAI (and now general partner at Felicis) still has.
Below is a collection of the largest startups founded by OpenAI alumni, in alphabetical order. And we’re sure this list will grow over time.
David Luan – Adept AI Labs
David Luan was OpenAI’s VP of engineering until he left in 2020. After working at Google, in 2021 he co-founded Adept AI Labs, a startup that builds AI tools for employees. The startup ended up raising $350 million at a valuation north of $1 billion by 2023, but Luan left in late 2024 to direct Amazon’s AI agents lab after Amazon hired Adept’s founders.
Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei, and John Schulman — Anthropic
Siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei left OpenAI in 2021 to build their own startup, San Francisco-based Anthropic, which has long emphasized the security focus of AI. OpenAI founder John Schulman joined Anthropic in 2024, promising to build “safer AGI.” The company has since become OpenAI’s biggest competitor and recently raised a $30 billion Series G, valuing it at $380 billion in the process. IPO rumors are also rife, as the company is reportedly preparing for a public listing that could come sometime this year. (OpenAI is reportedly preparing for an IPO this year and may also be trying to beat Anthropic to the public market.)
Rhythm Garg, Linden Li, and Yash Patil Used computer
Three former OpenAI employees (Rhythm Garg, Linden Li, and Yash Patil) have reportedly raised $20 million to found Applied Compute, as reported by Upstart Media. All three worked as technical staff at OpenAI for more than a year before leaving last May to launch the startup, according to their LinkedIn. The startup helps businesses train and deploy custom AI agents. Benchmark led the round, valuing the ten-month-old company at $100 million, Upstart Media reported.
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Pieter Abbeel, Peter Chen, and Rocky Duan – Covariant
The trio all worked at OpenAI in 2016 and 2017 as research scientists before co-founding Covariant, a Berkeley, California-based startup that builds basic AI models for robots. By 2024, Amazon hired all three of Covariant’s founders and a quarter of its employees. The quasi-acquisition was viewed by some as part of a broader trend of Big Tech trying to avoid antitrust scrutiny.
Tim Shi – Cresta
Tim Shi was an early member of the OpenAI team, where he focused on building safe general artificial intelligence (AGI), according to his LinkedIn profile. He worked at OpenAI for a year in 2017 but left to found Cresta, a San Francisco-based AI consulting firm that has raised more than $270 million from VCs like Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and others, according to a press release.
Jonas Schneider – Daedalus
Jonas Schneider led OpenAI software engineering for the robotics group but left in 2019 to found Daedalus, which builds advanced factories for precision parts. The San Francisco-based startup raised a $21 million Series A last year with support from Khosla Ventures, among others.
Andrej Karpathy – Eureka Labs
Computer visionary Andrej Karpathy was a founding member and research scientist at OpenAI, leaving the startup to join Tesla in 2017 to lead its autonomous driving program. Karpathy is also well known for his YouTube videos explaining the main concepts of AI. He left Tesla in 2024 to found his own educational technology, Eureka Labs, a San Francisco-based startup that builds AI teaching assistants.
Margaret Jennings – Kindo
Margaret Jennings worked at OpenAI in 2022 and 2023 until she left to found Kindo, which markets itself as an AI chatbot for businesses. Kindo has raised more than $27 million in funding, last raising a Series A of $20.6 million in 2024. Jennings left Kindo in 2024 to lead product and research at French AI startup Mistral, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Maddie Hall – Living carbon
Maddie Hall worked on “special projects” at OpenAI but left in 2019 to found Living Carbon, a San Francisco-based startup that aims to create engineered plants that can absorb more carbon from the sky to fight climate change. Living Carbon raised a Series A round of $21 million in 2023, bringing its total funding up to that time to $36 million, according to a press release.
Liam Fedus – Periodical Labs
Liam Fedus, OpenAI’s VP of post-training research, left the company in March 2025 to join his former Google Brain colleague, Ekin Dogus Cubuk, and launch Periodic Labs. The startup wants to use AI scientists to discover new things, especially new superconducting materials. It emerged from stealth mode in September 2025, armed with a whopping $300 million in seed round funding with backers including Jezz Bezos, Eric Schmidt, Felicis and Andreessen Horowitz.
Aravind Srinivas – Confusion
Aravind Srinivas worked as a research scientist at OpenAI for a year until 2022, when he left the company to found the AI search engine Perplexity. His startup has attracted a number of high-profile investors such as Jeff Bezos and Nvidia, although it has also sparked controversy over the negative web scraping. Perplexity, based in San Francisco, last reported a $200 million raise at a $20 billion valuation.
Jeff Arnold – Pilot
Jeff Arnold served as OpenAI’s chief operating officer for five months in 2016 before founding San Francisco-based accounting startup Pilot in 2017. The pilot, which initially focused on accounting for startups, ended up raising a $100 million Series C in 2021 at a $1.2 billion valuation and attracted investors like Jeff Bezo. Arnold served as Pilot’s COO until he left in 2024 to launch a VC fund.
Shariq Hashme – Prosper Robotics
Shariq Hashme worked for OpenAI for 9 months in 2017 on a bot that could play the popular video game Dota, according to his LinkedIn profile. After a few years at data labeling startup Scale AI, he co-founded London-based Prosper Robotics in 2021. The startup says it’s working on robotics for people’s homes, a hot trend in robotics that other players like Norway’s 1X and Texas-based Apptronik are also working on.
Ilya Sutskever – Safe Superintelligence
OpenAI founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever left OpenAI in May 2024 after he was reportedly part of a failed attempt to replace CEO Sam Altman. Soon after, he founded Safe Superintelligence, or SSI, with “one goal and one product: safe intelligence,” he said. Details about what the startup does are scant: It has no product and no revenue yet. But investors wanted a piece anyway, and it managed to raise $2 billion, with the latest valuation reportedly rising to $32 billion this month. SSI is based in Palo Alto, California, and Tel Aviv, Israel.
Emmett Shear – Title AI
Emmett Shear is the former CEO of Twitch who was the interim CEO of OpenAI in November 2023 a few days before Sam Altman rejoined the company. Shear launched an AI company, StemAI, in the year 2024 (although it appears to have since been renamed Softmax). The company, which appears to be a research firm, has attracted funding from Andreessen Horowitz.
Mira Murati – Thinking Machines Lab
Mira Murati, OpenAI’s CTO, left OpenAI to found her own company, Think Machines Lab, which came out of the blue in February 2025. It said at the time (vaguely) that it would build AI that was “customizable” and “intelligent.” The San Francisco AI startup, now valued at around $12 billion, announced its first product late last year: an API that fine-tunes language models. It recently made headlines when two of its founders announced earlier this year that they would be returning to OpenAI.
Kyle Kosic — xAI
Kyle Kosic left OpenAI in 2023 to become the founder and infrastructure leader of xAI, Elon Musk’s AI startup that offers a rival chatbot, Grok. In 2024, however, he defected to OpenAI, where he lives. Meanwhile, xAI (which acquired Musk’s social media site X) was bought by Musk’s SpaceX, giving the coalesce company a $1.25 billion valuation. It’s looking to go public sometime in June for what could be an historic lineup.
Angela Jiang – Worktrace AI
Angela Jiang left OpenAI in 2024, after working as a product manager and in the public policy team. In April 2025, it quietly launched Worktrace, which uses AI to help businesses streamline business operations. It looks at employee work patterns and automates workflows, according to the company’s website. The venture is backed by Mura Murati, former CTO of OpenAI, who went on to launch Thinking Labs. It is also supported by the OpenAI startup fund, in addition to a number of other OpenAI names, such as its chief strategy officer, Jason Kwon.
Stealth Startups
In addition to these startups, a number of other former OpenAI employees have founded startups that are still in stealth mode, according to various TechCrunch updates available on LinkedIn. For example, it appears that former OpenAI researcher Danilo Hellermark has been working on a private AI startup for the past few years. He officially left OpenAI in early 2023. There is also one in the works from Lucas Negritto, who worked on OpenAI’s technical team and left the company in 2023 after three years. Since then, he has founded one startup and has been working on another since August 2025, according to his LinkedIn.
