The OpenAI mafia: 15 of the most notable startups founded by alumni | TechCrunch

Transfer over, PayPal mafia: There’s a brand new tech mafia in Silicon Valley. Because the startup at the back of ChatGPT, OpenAI is arguably the largest AI participant on the town. Its meteoric upward push to a $300 billion valuation has spurred many staff to go away the AI large to create startups of their very own.

The hype round OpenAI is so excessive that a few of these startups, like Ilya Sutskever’s Protected Superintelligence and Mira Murati’s Pondering Machines Lab, had been ready to lift billions of greenbacks with out even launching a product. 

However there are many different startups within the OpenAI mafia ecosystem. Those vary from AI seek large Perplexity to xAI, the brand new proprietor of X (previously Twitter.) There’s additionally smaller outfits with some futuristic plans, like Dwelling Carbon, which is growing vegetation that suck extra carbon out of the ambience, or Prosper Robotics, which is development a robotic butler.

Under is a roundup of essentially the most notable startups based by means of OpenAI alumni.

Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei, and John Schulman — Anthropic

Siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei left OpenAI in 2021 to shape their very own startup, San Francisco-based Anthropic, that has lengthy touted a focal point on AI protection.  Later, OpenAI co-founder John Schulman joined Anthropic in 2024, pledging to construct a “secure AGI.” OpenAI reportedly stays a couple of instances greater than Anthropic by means of income ($3.7 billion in comparison to $1 billion for 2024, The Data reported). However Anthropic has briefly grown to transform OpenAI’s greatest rival and used to be valued at $61.5 billion in March 2025.

Ilya Sutskever — Protected Superintelligence 

OpenAI co-founder and leader scientist Ilya Sutskever left OpenAI in Might 2024 after he used to be reportedly a part of a failed effort to exchange CEO Sam Altman. In a while in a while, he co-founded Protected Superintelligence, or SSI, with “one objective and one product: a secure superintelligence,” he says. Information about what precisely the startup is as much as are scant: It has no product and no income but. However buyers are clamoring for a work anyway, and it’s been ready to lift $2 billion, with its newest valuation reportedly emerging to $32 billion this month. SSI is founded in Palo Alto, California, and Tel Aviv, Israel.

Mira Murati — Pondering Machines Lab 

Mira Murati, OpenAI’s CTO, left OpenAI closing 12 months to stumbled on her personal corporate, Pondering Machines Lab, which emerged from stealth in February 2025, pronouncing (slightly vaguely) that it is going to construct AI that’s extra “customizable” and “succesful.” The San Francisco AI startup has no product or income however a variety of former best OpenAI researchers and is reportedly within the technique of elevating a large $2 billion seed spherical valuing it at $10 billion, minimal.

Aravind Srinivas — Perplexity

Aravind Srinivas labored as a analysis scientist at OpenAI for a 12 months till 2022, when he left the corporate to co-found AI seek engine Perplexity. His startup has attracted a string of high-profile buyers like Jeff Bezos and Nvidia, even supposing it’s additionally brought about controversy over alleged unethical internet scraping. Perplexity, which is founded in San Francisco, is lately elevating about $1 billion at an $18 billion valuation as of March 2025. 

Kyle Kosic — xAI

Kyle Kosic left OpenAI in 2023 to transform a co-founder and infrastructure lead of xAI, Elon Musk’s AI startup that provides a rival chatbot, Grok. In 2024, alternatively, he hopped again to OpenAI. Palo Alto-based xAI not too long ago obtained X, previously Twitter, and gave the mixed entity a valuation of $113 billion. The all-stock transaction raised some eyebrows however is a just right deal when you’re making a bet on Musk’s empire.

Emmett Shear — Stem AI

Emmett Shear is the previous CEO of Twitch who used to be OpenAI’s meantime CEO in November 2023 for a couple of days earlier than Sam Altman rejoined the corporate. Shear is operating on his personal stealth startup, known as Stem AI, Techmim published in 2024. Even supposing there are few information about its task and fundraising to this point, it has already attracted investment from Andreessen Horowitz.

Andrej Karpathy — Eureka Labs

Laptop imaginative and prescient skilled Andrej Karpathy used to be a founding member and analysis scientist at OpenAI, leaving the startup to sign up for Tesla in 2017 to guide its autopilot program. Karpathy could also be well known for his YouTube movies explaining core AI ideas. He left Tesla in 2024 to stumbled on his personal training era startup, Eureka Labs, a San Francisco-based startup this is development AI instructing assistants.

Jeff Arnold — Pilot

Jeff Arnold labored as OpenAI’s head of operations for 5 months in 2016 earlier than co-founding San Francisco-based accounting startup Pilot in 2017. Pilot, which centered to start with on doing accounting for startups, closing raised a $100 million Sequence C in 2021 at a $1.2 billion valuation and has attracted buyers like Jeff Bezos. Arnold labored as Pilot’s COO till leaving in 2024 to release a VC fund.

David Luan — Adept AI Labs 

David Luan used to be OpenAI’s engineering VP till he left in 2020. After a stint at Google, in 2021 he co-founded Adept AI Labs, a startup that builds AI equipment for workers. The startup closing raised $350 million at a valuation north of $1 billion in 2023, however Luan left in overdue 2024 to supervise Amazon’s AI brokers lab after Amazon employed Adept’s founders.

Tim Shi — Cresta 

Tim Shi used to be an early member of OpenAI’s group, the place he all for development secure synthetic normal intelligence (AGI), in line with his LinkedIn profile. He labored at OpenAI for a 12 months in 2017 however left to stumbled on Cresta, a San Francisco-based AI touch middle startup that has raised over $270 million from VCs like Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and others, in line with a press unlock.

Pieter Abbeel, Peter Chen, and Rocky Duan — Covariant

The trio all labored at OpenAI in 2016 and 2017 as analysis scientists earlier than founding Covariant, a Berkeley, California-based startup that builds basis AI fashions for robots. In 2024, Amazon employed all 3 of the Covariant founders and a couple of quarter of its body of workers. The quasi acquisition used to be era/2025/01/18/amazon-antitrust-ai-whistleblower/” goal=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener nofollow”>considered by means of some as a part of a broader pattern of Large Tech making an attempt to keep away from antitrust scrutiny. 

Maddie Corridor — Dwelling Carbon

Maddie Corridor labored on “particular initiatives” at OpenAI however left in 2019 to co-found Dwelling Carbon, a San Francisco-based startup that targets to create engineered vegetation that may suck extra carbon out of the sky to combat local weather trade. Dwelling Carbon raised a $21 million Sequence A spherical in 2023, bringing its overall investment till then to $36 million, in line with a press unlock.

Shariq Hashme — Prosper Robotics

Shariq Hashme labored for OpenAI for 9 months in 2017 on a bot that might play the preferred online game Dota, in keeping with his LinkedIn profile. After a couple of years at data-labeling startup Scale AI, he co-founded London-based Prosper Robotics in 2021. The startup says it’s running on a robotic butler for other people’s properties, a sizzling pattern in robotics that different avid gamers like Norway’s 1X and Texas-based Apptronik also are running on.

Jonas Schneider — Daedalus

Jonas Schneider led OpenAI’s device engineering for robotics group however left in 2019 to co-found Daedalus, which builds complex factories for precision parts. The San Francisco-based startup raised a $21 million Sequence A final 12 months with backing from Khosla Ventures, amongst others.

Margaret Jennings — Kindo

Margaret Jennings labored at OpenAI in 2022 and 2023 till she left to co-found Kindo, which markets itself as an AI chatbot for enterprises. Kindo has raised over $27 million in investment, closing elevating a $20.6 million Sequence A in 2024. Jennings left Kindo in 2024 to move product and analysis at French AI startup Mistral, in line with her LinkedIn profile.