OpenAI Mafia: 18 startups founded by graduates

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 now reportedly 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, some of whom have launched startups of their own. Of these companies, some have become major competitors (such as Anthropic), while others, based on investor interest alone, have managed to raise billions without even launching a product (see: Thinking Machine Labs).

In January, Alyssa Rosenthal, OpenAI’s first director of sales, talked a little about this growing network. She, like other OpenAI alumni who did not become founders, has decided to become an investor and said she will tap into the network of former OpenAI founders to seek out deal flow. We know that Peter Ding, former head of consumer products at OpenAI (and now general partner at Felicis) has already done just that.

Here’s a summary of top startups founded by OpenAI alumni, in alphabetical order. We are sure that this list will grow over time.

David Luan – Artificial Intelligence Labs

David Luan was vice president of engineering at OpenAI 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 $1 billion valuation in 2023, but Luan left in late 2024 to oversee Amazon’s AI agent lab after Amazon hired the Adept founders.

Dario Amudi, Daniela Amudi, and John Shulman – Anthropists

Brothers Dario and Daniela Amodei left OpenAI in 2021 to form their own startup, San Francisco-based Anthropic, which has long promoted a focus on AI safety. OpenAI co-founder John Shulman joined Anthropic in 2024, pledging to build “safe AI.” The company has since become OpenAI’s biggest competitor and has just raised a $30 billion Series G, securing a $380 billion valuation in the process. IPO rumors are also rife, with the company reportedly gearing up for a public listing that could come sometime this year. (OpenAI is also allegedly preparing for an IPO this year and may be trying to beat Anthropic to the public market.)

Cadence Garg, Linden Lee, Yash Patel – Applied calculation

Three former OpenAI employees (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 worked as technical staff at OpenAI for more than a year before leaving last May to launch the startup, according to their LinkedIn profile. The startup helps organizations train and deploy custom AI agents. Benchmark led the round, valuing the 10-month-old company at $100 million, Upstart Media reported.

Peter Appel, Peter Chen, and Rocky Doan – variable

The trio all worked at OpenAI in 2016 and 2017 as research scientists before founding Covariant, a Berkeley, Calif.-based startup that builds basic AI models for robots. In 2024, Amazon hired all three Covariant founders and about a quarter of its employees. The quasi-takeover has been viewed by some as part of a broader trend of big tech companies trying to avoid antitrust scrutiny.

Tim Shea – Christa

Tim Shi was an early member of the OpenAI team, focused on building secure 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 more than $270 million from venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and others, according to a press release.

Jonas Schneider – Daedalus

Jonas Schneider led the software engineering team for robotics at OpenAI, but left in 2019 to co-found Daedalus, which builds advanced factories for microcomponents. The San Francisco-based startup raised a $21 million Series A last year with backing from Khosla Ventures, among others.

Andrej Karpathy – Eureka Laboratories

Computer vision expert Andrei Karpathy was a founding member and research scientist at OpenAI, and left the startup to join Tesla in 2017 to lead its Autopilot program. Karpathy is also known for his YouTube videos explaining basic AI concepts. He left Tesla in 2024 to found his edtech startup, Eureka Labs, a San Francisco-based startup that builds artificial intelligence teaching assistants.

Margaret Jennings – Kendo

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 more than $27 million in funding, and last raised 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.

Maddy Hall – Living Carbon

Maddie Hall worked on “special projects” at OpenAI but left in 2019 to found Living Carbon, a San Francisco-based startup that aims to engineer factories that can suck more carbon from the sky to combat climate change. Living Carbon raised a $21 million funding round in 2023, bringing its total funding to then to $36 million, according to a press release.

Liam Vidos — Periodic laboratories

Liam Fidos, vice president of post-training research at OpenAI, left the company in March 2025 to collaborate with his former Google Brain colleague, Ekin Dogus Cubuk, to launch regular labs. The startup seeks to use artificial intelligence scientists to find new materials, especially new superconducting materials. It came out of stealth mode in September 2025, armed with a massive $300 million in seed funding with backers including Jez Bezos, Eric Schmidt, Phyllis, and Andreessen Horowitz.

Aravind Srinivas – Confusion

Aravind Srinivas worked as a research scientist at OpenAI for a year until 2022, when he left the company to co-found the AI ​​search engine Perplexity. His startup has attracted a string of high-profile investors such as Jeff Bezos and Nvidia, although it has also caused controversy over allegedly unethical web scraping. Perplexity, based in San Francisco, announced a $200 million raise at a $20 billion valuation.

Jeff Arnold – pilot

Jeff Arnold served as COO of OpenAI for five months in 2016 before co-founding San Francisco-based accounting firm Pilot in 2017. Pilot, which initially focused on doing accounting for startups, last raised a $100 million Series C in 2021 at a $1.2 billion valuation and has attracted investors like Jeff Bezos. Arnold served as Pilot’s chief operating officer until he left in 2024 to launch a venture capital fund.

Shariq Hashemi – Prosper Robotics Company

Shariq Hashem worked at OpenAI for nine months in 2017 on a bot that could play the popular video game Dota, according to his LinkedIn profile. After a few years working at data classification startup Scale AI, he co-founded London-based Prosper Robotics in 2021. The startup says it is working on an automated server for people’s homes, a hot trend in robotics that other players like Norway’s 1X and Texas-based Apptronik are also working on.

Ilya Sutskever – secure superintelligence

Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s co-founder and chief scientist, left OpenAI in May 2024 after he was reportedly part of a failed attempt to replace CEO Sam Altman. Shortly thereafter, he co-founded Safe Superintelligence, or SSI, with one goal and one product: safe superintelligence, he said. Details about what the startup intends to do are scant: It has no product and no revenue yet. But investors are clamoring for a piece anyway, and it has managed to raise $2 billion, with its latest valuation rising to $32 billion this month. SSI is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, and Tel Aviv, Israel.

Emmett Sherr – Artificial Intelligence Trunk

Emmett Shear is the former CEO of Twitch who was the interim CEO of OpenAI in November 2023 for a few days before Sam Altman returned to the company. Shear launched an AI company, StemAI, in 2024 (although it appears to have since been rebranded as Softmax). The company, which appears to be a research firm, has attracted funding from Andreessen Horowitz.

Mira Moratti – Thinking Machines Laboratory

Mira Moratti, CTO of OpenAI, left OpenAI to found her own company, Thinking Machines Lab, which came out of secrecy in February 2025. She said at the time (somewhat vaguely) that she would build more “customizable” and “capable” AI. The San Francisco AI startup, now valued at $12 billion, announced its first product late last year: an application programming interface (API) that fine-tunes language models. It recently made headlines when two of its founders announced earlier this year that they would be returning to OpenAI.

Kyle Kosic — xAI

Kyle Kosich left OpenAI in 2023 to become co-founder and infrastructure lead for xAI, Elon Musk’s AI startup that offers a competing chatbot, Grok. However, in 2024, it returned to OpenAI, where it still exists. Meanwhile, xAI (which acquired Musk’s social media site X) was bought by Musk’s SpaceX, giving the combined company a valuation of $1.25 trillion. It is looking to go public sometime in June for what could be a landmark listing.

Angela Jiang – Worktrace AI

Angela Jiang left OpenAI in 2024, after working as a product manager and on the public policy team. In April 2025, it quietly launched Worktrace, which uses artificial intelligence to help organizations make business processes more efficient. It monitors employees’ work patterns and automates workflow, according to the company’s website. This work is supported by Mura Murati, former CTO at OpenAI, who launched Thinking Labs. It’s also backed by the OpenAI Startup Fund, as well as a slew of other OpenAI names, like Chief Strategy Officer, Jason Kwon.

Stealth startups

In addition to these startups, a number of former OpenAI employees have founded startups that remain in stealth mode, according to various updates TechCrunch found on LinkedIn. For example, former OpenAI researcher Danilo Hellermark has apparently been working on an AI startup for the past few years. He officially left OpenAI at the beginning of 2023. There also appears to be one in the works from Lucas Negritto, who worked on the OpenAI technical team and left the company in 2023 after three years. Since then, he has founded a startup and has been working on another since August 2025, according to his LinkedIn.