A co-founder of a Silicon Valley AI startup valued at $12 billion has been fired after months of internal turmoil that reportedly began with an undisclosed employment relationship and then escalated into conflicts over leadership and control.
Barret Zoph, co-founder and chief technology officer of Thinking Machines Lab, was fired last Wednesday following a contentious meeting with CEO Mira Murati after she raised concerns about his conduct, confidence and performance, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Zoph allegedly admitted to Murati that he was in a romantic relationship with a younger colleague that began while they both worked for their former employer, OpenAI.
Murati had suspected the relationship as early as last summer, the Journal reported. Zoph initially denied the relationship, according to the article.
But weeks later, he and the woman reportedly admitted their relationship with Murati.
Shortly after the revelation, she left the company and returned to OpenAI.
While this woman was Zoph’s junior, she did not report to him, says the Journal.
Zoph told the newspaper he was fired after Murati learned he was negotiating a role with another company.
“Thinking Machines Lab terminated my employment only after it learned I was leaving the company. Period,” he told the Journal.
“At no time did TML cite performance reasons or unethical conduct on my part as a reason for my termination and any suggestion to the contrary is false and defamatory.”
Like the woman he allegedly had a relationship with, Zoph returned to OpenAI. She was not named in the article.
The fallout from the relationship then gave rise to deeper conflicts over leadership and authority.
According to the Journal, Zoph and two colleagues confronted Murati in a meeting earlier this month, saying they disagreed with the company’s direction and were pushing for Zoph to get greater control over technical decision-making — including having senior executives report to him instead of Murati.
Murati backed down, citing concerns about Zoph’s productivity in previous months, the Journal reported.
Executives had observed a sharp decline in his engagement after he was removed from his leadership role, including significantly reduced activity on Slack, the company’s primary means of internal communications.
Thinking Machines Lab co-founder Luke Metz and founding researcher Sam Schoenholz also left the company and returned to OpenAI, according to the Journal.
In October, another co-founder, Andrew Tulloch, left the startup to return to Meta Platforms.
Thinking Machines Lab was founded last year by Murati and a group of former OpenAI executives and researchers. It has quickly become one of the most closely watched AI startups in Silicon Valley.
The company raised a record $2 billion funding round at a $12 billion valuation, pitching to investors its ambition to build more customizable and transparent artificial intelligence systems.
But those departures left the startup with just three of its six original founders less than a year after its launch, underscoring the intense competition for elite AI talent and the fragility of even the best-funded newcomers.
Murati, who briefly held the title of interim CEO of OpenAI after the short-lived ouster of Sam Altman, did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the Journal. OpenAI declined to comment on the publication’s hires.