2026년 2월 20일 · Unknown · financial · 출처 Yahoo Finance
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - 2025/02/04: Open AI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman speaks during the Kakao media day in Seoul. South Korean tech giant Kakao Corp. on February 4 announced partnership with OpenAI to use ChatGPT on its new artificial intelligence (AI) service joining a global alliance led by the U.S. AI company amid intensifying competition in the global AI market. (Photo by Kim Jae-Hwan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) | Image Credits:Kim Jae-Hwan/SOPA Images/LightRocket / Getty Images
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, valuing the company at more than $850 billion.
Many employees have come and gone since the company first launched a decade ago, and some have launched startups of their own. Among these, some have become top rivals (like Anthropic), while others, just on investor interest alone, have managed to raise billions without even launching a product (see, Thinking Machine Labs).
In January, Aliisa Rosenthal, OpenAI’s first sales leader, spoke a little bit about this growing network. She, like the other OpenAI alums who did not become founders, decided to become an investor and said she was going to tap into the ex-OpenAI founder network to look for deal flow. We know Peter Deng, OpenAI’s former head of consumer products (and now general partner at Felicis) already has.
Below is a roundup of the major startups founded by OpenAI alumni, in alphabetical order. And we are certain this list will grow over time.
David Luan — Adept AI Labs
David Luan was OpenAI’s engineering VP until he left in 2020. After a stint at Google, in 2021 he co-founded Adept AI Labs, a startup that builds AI 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 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 form their own startup, San Francisco-based Anthropic, that has long touted a focus on AI safety. OpenAI co-founder John Schulman joined Anthropic in 2024, pledging to build a “safe AGI.” The company has since become OpenAI’s biggest rival and just raised a $30 billion Series G, nabbing a $380 billion valuation in the process. IPO rumors are also swirling, as the company reportedly prepares for a public listing that could come sometime this year. (OpenAI is also allegedly preparing for an IPO this year and is maybe even trying to beat Anthropic to the public market.)
Rhythm Garg, Linden Li, and Yash Patil — Applied Compute
Three ex-OpenAI staffers (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 of them worked as technical staff at OpenAI for more than a year before leaving last May to launch the startup, per their LinkedIns. The startup helps enterprises train and deploy custom AI agents. Benchmark led the round, valuing the 10-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 founding Covariant, a Berkeley, California-based startup that builds foundation AI models for robots. In 2024, Amazon hired all three of the Covariant founders and about a quarter of its staff. The quasi-acquisition was viewed by some as part of a broader trend of Big Tech attempting to avoid antitrust scrutiny.
Tim Shi — Cresta
Tim Shi was an early member of OpenAI’s team, where he focused on building safe 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 over $270 million from VCs like Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and others, according to a press release.
Jonas Schneider — Daedalus
Jonas Schneider led OpenAI’s software engineering for robotics team but left in 2019 to co-found Daedalus, which builds advanced factories for precision components. The San Francisco-based startup raised a $21 million Series A last year with backing from 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 its autopilot program. Karpathy is also well-known for his YouTube videos explaining core AI concepts. He left Tesla in 2024 to found his own education technology startup, Eureka Labs, a San Francisco-based startup that is building AI teaching assistants.
Margaret Jennings — Kindo
Margaret Jennings worked at OpenAI in 2022 and 2023 until she left to co-found Kindo, which markets itself as an AI chatbot for enterprises. Kindo has raised over $27 million in funding, last raising a $20.6 million Series A in 2024. Jennings left Kindo in 2024 to head product and research at French AI 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 suck more carbon out of the sky to fight climate change. Living Carbon raised a $21 million Series A round in 2023, bringing its total funding until then to $36 million, according to a press release.
Liam Fedus — Periodic Labs
Liam Fedus, OpenAI’s VP of post-training research, left the company in March 2025 to team up with his former Google Brain colleague, Ekin Dogus Cubuk, and launch Periodic Labs. The startup seeks to use AI scientists to find new materials, particularly new superconducting materials. It came out of stealth m…