Ilya Sutskever to leave OpenAI, Jakub Pachocki announced as Chief Scientist
OpenAI announced that co-founder and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever is departing the company. Jakub Pachocki, previously leading GPT-4 training efforts, has been named as the new Chief Scientist. This marks a significant leadership transition at one of the most prominent AI labs, following Sutskever's involvement in the November 2023 board crisis.
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OpenAI announces leadership transition
OpenAI published an announcement regarding a leadership transition at the company. The body of the post is not available, but given the date of November 17, 2023, this corresponds to the sudden removal of Sam Altman as CEO by the OpenAI board. This was one of the most significant corporate governance events in AI industry history, triggering a multi-day crisis that ended with Altman's reinstatement and a restructured board.
Sam Altman Returns as CEO, OpenAI Forms New Initial Board
Sam Altman has been reinstated as CEO of OpenAI following his brief ouster, with Mira Murati continuing as CTO and Greg Brockman returning as President. A new initial board has been formed, chaired by Bret Taylor. The announcement includes messages from Altman and Taylor outlining the leadership structure going forward. This resolves the governance crisis that began with Altman's sudden firing by the previous board in November 2023.
Zico Kolter Joins OpenAI's Board of Directors
OpenAI has appointed Zico Kolter, an AI safety and alignment researcher, to its Board of Directors. Kolter will also serve on the Safety & Security Committee. The move is framed as strengthening OpenAI's governance with technical safety expertise, following the board restructuring that occurred after the November 2023 leadership crisis.
Data Points: GPT-5.4 Pro, Luma Uni-1, Phi-4-reasoning-vision-15B, Yuan 3.0 Ultra, OpenAI hardware chief resignation
The Batch's weekly roundup covers several significant AI developments: OpenAI released GPT-5.4 and GPT-5.4 Pro with computer-use agent capabilities, 1M token context, and strong benchmark gains on GDPval and OSWorld-Verified; Luma AI released Uni-1, a unified autoregressive model for visual understanding and generation; Microsoft released Phi-4-reasoning-vision-15B, an open-weights multimodal model trained on 200B tokens; Yuan Lab AI released Yuan 3.0 Ultra, a 1T-parameter MoE model with SOTA on document retrieval benchmarks. Additionally, OpenAI hardware chief Caitlin Kalinowski resigned over the company's Pentagon deal, citing concerns about surveillance and autonomous weapons governance.
OpenAI Appoints Retired U.S. Army General Paul M. Nakasone to Board of Directors
OpenAI has appointed retired U.S. Army General Paul M. Nakasone to its Board of Directors, where he will also serve on the Board's Safety and Security Committee. Nakasone is a former head of U.S. Cyber Command and the NSA, bringing significant cybersecurity and national security expertise. The appointment continues OpenAI's post-November 2023 board restructuring and signals increased emphasis on security governance.
OpenAI Board Review Completed: Altman and Brockman Confirmed as Leaders, New Governance Structure Announced
OpenAI has completed its internal review following the November 2023 board crisis and confirmed that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman will continue to lead the organization. New board members have been named and enhancements to the governance structure have been introduced. This marks a formal resolution to the leadership turmoil that briefly saw Altman removed and reinstated.
Google I/O Signals Shift in AI-Driven Science Strategy
MIT Technology Review analyzes Demis Hassabis's remarks at Google I/O 2026, where he described humanity as 'standing in the foothills of the singularity.' The piece examines how Google DeepMind's public framing and strategic direction for AI in scientific research is evolving. The commentary reflects on broader shifts in how major labs are positioning AI as a tool for accelerating scientific discovery.
Data Points: OpenAI shuts down Sora, Anthropic multi-agent harness, EVA voice benchmark, Arm AGI CPU, White House AI preemption proposal
OpenAI is shutting down its Sora text-to-video platform without explanation, ending a major Disney licensing deal worth up to $1 billion and eliminating video capabilities from ChatGPT amid Hollywood copyright tensions. Anthropic published details on a multi-agent harness enabling Claude to build full-stack applications over multi-hour sessions using a planner-generator-evaluator architecture. ServiceNow AI Research released EVA, an open-source two-dimensional benchmark for voice agents measuring both task accuracy and conversational experience quality. Additional items cover Arm's first self-designed data center CPU (AGI CPU) co-developed with Meta, and the Trump Administration's legislative proposal for a federal AI framework that would preempt state AI laws.