According to the Financial Times, OpenAI, which once held an absolute leading position in the field of artificial intelligence, is facing its most intense internal turmoil since the launch of ChatGPT. According to several informed sources, this tech giant, now valued at $500 billion, is undergoing a painful transformation from "pure research" to "product-oriented," and this adjustment has directly led to the departure of several senior executives and core researchers.
The Shift in Strategy
Under the leadership of CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI is transforming from a cutting-edge research lab into one of the largest commercial entities in Silicon Valley. In order to consolidate ChatGPT's market position and compete with Google (whose Gemini 3 model shows strong performance) and Anthropic (whose Claude excels in code generation), Altman issued a "red alert" last December.
This directive marked a complete reallocation of resources. Currently, the company is focusing the majority of its computing resources, algorithm support, and data scale on large language models (LLMs) that support ChatGPT. In contrast, the teams behind the previously cutting-edge video generation model Sora and image generation model DALL-E are facing resource shortages and project marginalization, as they are considered less relevant to the core product.
Talent Drain and Internal Struggles
This shift towards "engineering" and "productization" has triggered serious political tendencies and academic divisions within the company. The recent list of departures includes several high-profile individuals:
Jerry Tworek: A research vice president responsible for model reasoning, who left after seven years at OpenAI. It is reported that his proposal on "continuous learning" was rejected by Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki due to being incompatible with the existing LLM architecture.
Andrea Vallone: Head of model policy research, who has now joined the competitor Anthropic.
Tom Cunningham: An expert in economic research, his departure is seen as a sign that OpenAI is gradually moving away from neutral research and toward a commercial focus.
The Shift in the Business Moat
Although the internal research environment is under scrutiny, investors do not seem entirely pessimistic. Analysts point out that OpenAI's moat has shifted from pure technological superiority to user behavior and platform lock-in. ChatGPT currently has hundreds of millions of users, and this level of engagement may be more valuable in business than short-term technological advantages.
