Moving, PayPal Mafia: There is a new mafia technology in Silicon Valley. As starting behind Chatgpt, Openai is undoubtedly the largest AI player in the city. Its meteoric uptur of $ 300 billion has prompted many employees to leave the AI giant to create their own newly established businesses.
The OpenAi advertising campaign is so high that some of these newly established businesses, such as Ilya Sutskever’s safe superintelligence and Mira Murati’s thinking laboratory, were able to increase billions of dollars without starting a product.
But there are many other newly established businesses in the Openai Mafia ecosystem. These range from the AI search giant at Xai, the new X owner (formerly Twitter.) There are also smaller clothes with some futuristic designs, such as Living Carbon, which creates plants that suck more carbon from the atmosphere or prospering, which manufactures a robot.
Below is a Roundup of the most notable newly established businesses founded by OpenAi graduates.
Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei and John Schulman – Human
The brothers Dario and Daniela Amodei left Openai in 2021 to form their own start, Anthropic based in San Francisco, which has long been check a focus on security AI. Later, Openai’s co -founder John Schulman joined Anthropic in 2024, committing to build a “safe agi”. Openai often remains greater than humanity than revenue (3.7 billion $ compared 1 billion $ For 2024, the information mentioned). However, the man has quickly developed to become Openai’s biggest opponent and was estimated at $ 61.5 billion in March 2025.
Ilya sutskever – Safe Superintelligence
The co -founder and lead scientist of Openai, Ilya Sutskever, left Openai in May 2024 after reporting that it was part of a failed attempt to replace CEO Sam Altman. Shortly thereafter, he founded Safe Superintelligence, or SSI, with “a goal and a product: a safe hypereal,” he says. Details of exactly what the start is limited: it does not yet have a product and has no revenue yet. However, investors are shouting for a piece anyway and is able to raise $ 2 billion, with the latest valuation increased to $ 32 billion this month. The SSI is based in Palo Alto, California and Tel Aviv, Israel.
Mira Murati – Thinking Lab
Mira Murati, CTO of Openai, left Openai last year to find its own company, the thought laboratory, which emerged from Stealth in February 2025, announcing (rather indefinitely) that it would build AI which is more “adapted” and “capable”. The start of San Francisco AI does not have a product or revenue, but many former top researchers Openai and refers to the process of increasing a huge $ 2 billion seed that estimates it at $ 10 billion, minimal.
Aravind Srinivas – embarrassment
Aravind Srinivas worked as a researcher at Openai for one year by 2022, when he left the company to connect AI Search Engine. Its start has attracted a series of high profile investors such as Jeff Bezos and Nvidia, although it has also caused a dispute over the supposed unethical tissue abrasion. The embarrassment, based in San Francisco, is currently increasing about $ 1 billion in $ 18 billion in March 2025.
Kyle Kosic – Xai
Kyle Kosic left Openai in 2023 to co -founder and the lead of Xai’s infrastructure, the Elon Musk AI start -up that offers an opponent Chatbot, Grok. In 2024, however I got back In Openai. The XAI, based in Palo Alto, recently acquired X, a former Twitter, and gave the combined entity a $ 113 billion assessment. The transaction of all stocks has set some eyebrows, but it is a good deal if you bet on the Musk Empire.
Emmett Shear – Stem AI
Emmett Shear is the former CEO of Twitch, who was a temporary Openai CEO in November 2023 for a few days before Sam Altman returned to the company. Shear works for his own Stealth start -up, called STEM AI, TechCrunch revealed in 2024.
Andrej Karpathy – Eureka Labs
Computer Vision Andrej Karpathy’s expert was a founding and researcher at OpenAI, leaving the start to participate in Tesla in 2017 to drive the automatic pilot program. Karpathy is also known for its YouTube video Explaining the basic concepts AI. He left Tesla in 2024 to find his own start -up technology, Eureka Labs, a San Francisco -based start -up that manufactures AI’s teaching assistants.
Jeff Arnold – Pilot
Jeff Arnold worked as head of Openai business for five months in 2016, before co-establishment of San Francisco based accounting in 2017. Arnold worked as Pilot’s COO until leave 2024 for the start of a VC fund.
David Luan – Adept ai Labs
David Luan was Openai’s VP engineer until he left in 2020. After a Google stop, in 2021 he founded Ai Labs, a start -up AI tools for employees. The launch last brought $ 350 million to a $ 1 billion assessment in 2023, but Luan left in late 2024 to oversee Amazon’s AI AI workshop after Amazon Adept’s founders.
Tim Shi – Cresta
Tim Shi was an early member of the Openai team, where he focused on building safe artificial general intelligence (AGI), according to LinkedIn’s profile. He worked at Openai for a year in 2017, but let Cresta, a start of AI Contact Center that gave over $ 270 million from VCs such as Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and others, according to A, according to A. press release.
Pieter Abbeel, Peter Chen and Rocky Duan – Covariant
The trio worked at Openai in 2016 and 2017 as researchers before the establishment of Covariant, a Berkeley -based start -up, based in California that creates AI models for robots. In 2024, Amazon hired all three founders and about a quarter of its staff. The redemption quasi was considered by some As part of a broader trend of Big Tech trying to avoid antitrust control.
Maddie Hall – Live Coal
Maddie Hall worked in “special projects” in Openai, but left 2019 to meet Living Carbon, a San Francisco -based start -up that aims to create mechanical plants that can suck more carbon from the sky to combat climate change. Living Carbon increased a $ 21 million round of 2023, bringing its total funding to 36 million, according to one press release.
Shariq Hashme – Prosper Robotics
Shariq Hashme worked for Openai for 9 months in 2017 on a bot that could play the popular Dota video game, according to LinkedIn’s profile. After a few years on the starting scale of the AI data note, he founded the London -based robotic prosper robotics in 2021. Starting says he works in a butler robot for people’s homes, a hot tendency in robotics that other players such as Norbia’s apptron
Jonas Schneider – Daedalus
Jonas Schneider led Openai’s mechanical software for the robotics team, but left 2019 to meet Daedalus, which builds advanced precision plants. San Francisco -based starting up a series of $ 21 million last year with support from Khosla Ventures, among others.
Margaret Jennings – Kindo
Margaret Jennings worked at Openai in 2022 and 2023 until she left to meet Kindo, who trades himself as a Chatbot for businesses. Kindo has increased over $ 27 million in funding, last lifting A series of $ 20.6 million in 2024. Jennings left Kindo in 2024 to head a product and research at the French Ai Startup Mistral, according to LinkedIn’s profile.
