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 now reportedly in talks to complete a $100 billion deal, valuing the company at more than $850 billion.
Many employees have come and gone since the company first started a decade ago, and some have created their own startups. Among them, some have become top contenders (such as Anthropic), while others, solely on the interest of investors, have managed to raise billions without even launching a product (see Thinking Machine Labs).
In January, Aliisa Rosenthal, OpenAI’s first sales lead, talked a little about this growing network. She, like the other OpenAI partners who didn’t become founders, decided to become an investor and said she was going to tap into OpenAI’s former founder network to look for transaction flow. We know that Peter Deng, the former head of consumer products at OpenAI (and now a general partner at Felicis) already has.
Below is a summary of the major 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 vice president of engineering until he left in 2020. After a stint at Google, in 2021 he co-founded Adept AI Labs, a startup that builds artificial intelligence tools for employees. The startup last raised $350 million at a valuation north of $1 billion in 2023, but Luan left in late 2024 to oversee Amazon’s AI agent 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 create their own startup, San Francisco-based Anthropic, which has long is advertised focus on AI security; OpenAI co-founder John Schulman joined Anthropic in 2024, pledging to create a “secure AGI.” Since then, the company has become OpenAI’s biggest challenger and just raised a $30 billion Series G, gaining a $380 billion valuation in the process. IPO rumors are also swirling, as the company is reportedly gearing up for an IPO that could come sometime this year. (OpenAI is also reportedly gearing up for an IPO this year and is maybe even trying to defeat Anthropic in the public market.)
Rhythm Garg, Linden Li and Yash Patil — Applied Computing
Three former OpenAI executives (Rhythm Garg, Linden Li and Yash Patil) have reportedly raised $20 million for a startup called 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 start the startup, per their LinkedIn. The startup helps businesses train and deploy custom AI agents. Benchmark led the round, valuing the 10-month-old company at $100 million, Upstart Media reported.
Techcrunch event
Boston, MA
|
June 9, 2026
Pieter Abbeel, Peter Chen and Rocky Duan — Covariant
All three worked at OpenAI in 2016 and 2017 as research scientists before founding Covariant, a Berkeley, California-based startup that builds basic AI models for robots. In 2024, Amazon hired all three of Covariant’s founders and about a quarter of its staff. The quasi takeover was that some people saw as part of a broader trend of Big Tech trying to avoid antitrust scrutiny.
Tim C — Crest
Tim Shi was an early member of the OpenAI team, where he focused on building secure artificial general 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 contact center startup 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’s robotics software engineering team, but left in 2019 to co-found Daedalus, which makes advanced factories for precision parts. The San Francisco-based startup raised a $21 million Series A last year backed by Khosla Ventures, among others.
Andrej Karpathy — Eureka Labs
Computer vision expert Andrej Karpathy was a founding member and research scientist at OpenAI, leaving the startup to join Tesla in 2017 to lead the Autopilot program. Karpathy is also known for his YouTube video explaining the basic concepts of artificial intelligence. He left Tesla in 2024 to found his own education technology startup, Eureka Labs, a San Francisco-based startup building artificial intelligence teaching assistants.
Margaret Jennings — Quito
Margaret Jennings worked at OpenAI in 2022 and 2023 until she left to co-found Kindo, which bills itself as an AI chatbot for businesses. Kindo has raised over $27 million in funding, as of late lifting $20.6 million Series A in 2024. Jennings left Kindo in 2024 to lead product and research at French artificial intelligence startup Mistral, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Maddie Hall — Living Carbon
Maddie Hall worked on “special projects” at OpenAI but left in 2019 to co-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 has raised a $21 million Series A round in 2023, bringing its total funding so far to $36 million, according to a press release.
Liam Fedus – Periodical Workshops
Liam Fedus, OpenAI’s vice president of post-education research, left the company in March 2025 to join former Google Brain colleague Ekin Dogus Cubuk and start Periodic Labs. The startup seeks to use artificial intelligence scientists to find new materials, particularly new superconducting materials. It came out of stealth mode in September 2025, armed with a whopping $300 million in funding with backers including Jezz Bezos, Eric Schmidt, Felicis and Andreessen Horowitz.
Aravind Srinivas — Embarrassment
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, including Jeff Bezos and Nvidia, though it has also sparked controversy for allegedly unethical web scraping. San Francisco-based Perplexity last reported a $200 million raise at a $20 billion valuation.
Jeff Arnold — Pilot
Jeff Arnold served as OpenAI’s COO for five months in 2016 before co-founding San Francisco-based accounting startup Pilot in 2017. Pilot, which initially focused on accounting for startups, last raised a $100 million Series C in 2021 with $1.2 billion Jeff and attracted investment. Arnold served as Pilot’s COO until leaving 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 tagging startup Scale AI, he co-founded London-based Prosper Robotics in 2021. The startup says it’s working on a robot butler 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 — Secure Superintelligence
OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever left OpenAI in May 2024 after reportedly being involved in a failed bid to replace CEO Sam Altman. Shortly thereafter, he co-founded Safe Superintelligence, or SSI, with “one goal and one product: a safe superintelligence,” he says. Details on exactly what the startup is planning are scant: It has no product yet and no revenue. But investors are looking for a piece anyway, and it was able to raise $2 billion, with its latest valuation at $32 billion this month. SSI is headquartered in Palo Alto, California and Tel Aviv, Israel.
Emmett Shear — AI Executive
Emmett Shear is the former CEO of Twitch, who was the interim CEO of OpenAI in November 2023 for a few days before Sam Altman rejoined the company. Shear started an artificial intelligence company, StemAI, in 2024 (though it appears it has 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, CTO of OpenAI, left OpenAI to found her own company, Thinking Machines Lab, which emerged from stealth in February 2025. She said then (rather vaguely) that she would create AI that was more “adaptable” and “capable”. The $12 billion San Francisco AI startup announced its first product late last year: an API that refines language models. It recently made headlines when two of its co-founders announced earlier this year that they would be returning to OpenAI.
Kyle Kosic — xAI
Kyle Kosic left OpenAI in 2023 to become co-founder and chief infrastructure officer of xAI, Elon Musk’s AI startup that offers a competing chatbot, Grok. In 2024, however, himself jumped back to OpenAI, where it remains. Meanwhile, xAI (which acquired Musk’s social networking site X) was bought by Musk’s SpaceX, giving the merged company a value of $1.25 trillion. It is looking to go public sometime in June for what could be a historic listing.
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, she silently started Worktracewhich uses AI to help businesses to make business operations more efficient. It observes employee work patterns and automates workflow, 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 backed by the OpenAI seed fund, in addition to a number of other OpenAI names such as its chief strategist, Jason Kwon.
Stealth Startups
In addition to these startups, several other former OpenAI employees have founded startups that are still in stealth mode, according to various TechCrunch updates found on LinkedIn. For example, it appears that former OpenAI researcher Danilo Hellermark has been working on an artificial intelligence startup generator for the past few years. It officially left OpenAI in early 2023. It exists also one apparently in the works of 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.
