OpenAI has disbanded its team focused on the long-term risks of artificial intelligence just one year after the company announced the group, a source familiar with the situation confirmed to CNBC on Friday.
The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that some of the team members are being re-assigned to multiple other teams within the company.
The news comes days after both team leaders, OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, announced their departures from the Microsoft-backed startup. Leike on Friday wrote that OpenAI’s “safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products.”
OpenAI’s Superalignment team, announced last year, has focused on “scientific and technical breakthroughs to steer and control AI systems much smarter than us.” At the time, OpenAI said it would commit 20% of its computing power to the initiative over four years.
Sutskever and Leike on Tuesday announced their departures on X, hours apart, but on Friday, Leike shared more details about why he left the startup.
“I joined because I thought OpenAI would be the best place in the world to do this research,” Leike wrote on X. “However, I have been disagreeing with OpenAI leadership about the company’s core priorities for quite some time, until we finally reached a breaking point.”
Leike wrote that he believes much more of the company’s bandwidth should be focused on security, monitoring, preparedness, safety and societal impact.
“These problems are quite hard to get right, and I am concerned we aren’t on a trajectory to get there,” he wrote. “Over the past few months my team has been sailing against the wind. Sometimes we were struggling for compute and it was getting harder and harder to get this crucial research done.”
Leike added that OpenAI must become a “safety-first AGI company.”
“Building smarter-than-human machines is an inherently dangerous endeavor,” he wrote. “OpenAI is shouldering an enormous responsibility on behalf of all of humanity. But over the past years, safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products.”
Leike did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and OpenAI did not immediately provide a comment.
The high-profile departures come months after OpenAI went through a leadership crisis involving co-founder and CEO Sam Altman.
In November, OpenAI’s board ousted Altman, claiming in a statement that Altman had not been “consistently candid in his communications with the board.”
The issue seemed to grow more complex each following day, with The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets reporting that Sutskever trained his focus on ensuring that artificial intelligence would not harm humans, while others, including Altman, were instead more eager to push ahead with delivering new technology.
Altman’s ouster prompted resignations – or threats of resignations – including an open letter signed by virtually all of OpenAI’s employees, and uproar from investors, including Microsoft. Within a week, Altman was back at the company, and board members Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley and Ilya Sutskever, who had voted to oust Altman, were out. Sutskever stayed on staff at the time but no longer in his capacity as a board member. Adam D’Angelo, who had also voted to oust Altman, remained on the board.
When Altman was asked about Sutskever’s status on a Zoom call with reporters in March, he said there were no updates to share. “I love Ilya… I hope we work together for the rest of our careers, my career, whatever,” Altman said. “Nothing to announce today.”
On Tuesday, Altman shared his thoughts on Sutskever’s departure.
“This is very sad to me; Ilya is easily one of the greatest minds of our generation, a guiding light of our field, and a dear friend,” Altman wrote on X. “His brilliance and vision are well known; his warmth and compassion are less well known but no less important.” Altman said research director Jakub Pachocki, who has been at OpenAI since 2017, will replace Sutskever as chief scientist.
News of Sutskever’s and Leike’s departures, and the dissolution of the superalignment team, come days after OpenAI launched a new AI model and desktop version of ChatGPT, along with an updated user interface, the company’s latest effort to expand the use of its popular chatbot.
The update brings the GPT-4 model to everyone, including OpenAI’s free users, technology chief Mira Murati said Monday in a livestreamed event. She added that the new model, GPT-4o, is “much faster,” with improved capabilities in text, video and audio.
OpenAI said it eventually plans to allow users to video chat with ChatGPT. “This is the first time that we are really making a huge step forward when it comes to the ease of use,” Murati said.
Direxion signage at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Monday, Dec. 22, 2025. The holiday-shortened week started with gains in stocks amid a broad advance that saw a continuation of the bullish momentum on Wall Street.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Motive, a company with software for managing corporate trucks and drivers, on Tuesday filed for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “MTVE.”
The paperwork puts Motive among a fast-growing group of tech companies looking to go public in 2026. Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX have all reportedly considered making their shares widely available for trading next year.
Motive is smaller, reporting a $62.7 million net loss on $115.8 million in revenue in the third quarter. The loss widened from $41.3 million in the same quarter of 2024, while revenue grew about 23% year over year. The company had almost 100,000 clients at the end of September.
Ryan Johns, Obaid Khan and Shoaib Makani started Motive in 2013, originally under the name Keep Truckin. Makani, the CEO, is Khan’s brother-in-law.
Investors include Alphabet’s GV, Base10 Partners, Greenoaks, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Scale Venture Partners.
Motive’s AI Dashcam device for detecting unsafe driving “has prevented 170,000 collisions and saved 1,500 lives on our roads,” Makani wrote in a letter to investors. Most revenue comes from subscriptions, although Motive does sell replacement hardware and professional services.
The San Francisco company changed its name to Motive in 2022, and as of Sept. 30, it employed 4,508 people. Motive employs 400 full-time data annotators who apply labels that are meant to enhance artificial intelligence models.
Motive has ongoing patent-infringement litigation with competitor Samsara, which went public in 2021 and today has a $22 billion market capitalization.
Every weekday, the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer releases the Homestretch — an actionable afternoon update, just in time for the last hour of trading on Wall Street. Markets: The S & P 500 is on track for its fourth day of gains Tuesday, buoyed by strength in AI-related names. AI chipmakers and Club holdings Nvidia and Broadcom are up around 2.5% and 2%, respectively, in afternoon trading. Meanwhile, hopes that the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates in January further dimmed after stronger-than-expected economic data . The initial third-quarter GDP report, which was delayed due to the government shutdown, showed that the U.S. economy grew 4.3% in three months ended in September, beating the Dow Jones estimate of a 3.2% expansion. China truce: The Trump administration has opted to delay implementing additional tariffs on Chinese chips for at least 18 months, according to a Federal Register filing on Tuesday. The decision came after the administration concluded a trade investigation started under former President Joe Biden. The investigation determined China has “employed increasingly aggressive and sweeping non-market policies and practices in pursuing dominance” in the semiconductor industry, which has “disadvantaged U.S. companies, workers and the economy.” Despite that finding, the Trump administration said it implemented “an initial tariff level of 0 percent” on Chinese-made silicon until at least June 23, 2027. The move should help to keep trade U.S.-China tensions at bay, a positive for the broader economy and, in turn, the stock market as we head into 2026. While this move is about Chinese chips coming into the U.S., rather than U.S. restrictions on cutting edge chips going to China, the encouraging takeaway for investors is what it says about the White House’s posture toward China. Additionally, it should help with input costs for those companies that make products with Chinese chips in them in industries such as defense, medical devices and automotive. Buy the dip: Baird says weakness in Meta Platforms stock is a great opportunity for investors. After closing at a record $790 apiece on Aug. 12, shares drifted lower until late October — and then tanked in response to third-quarter earnings as investors fretted about its level of AI spending. While Meta shares bottomed a couple weeks later and have made a nice move since then, the stock is still more than 11% below its pre-earnings plunge. Year to date, Meta is up around 13.5%, trailing the S & P 500’s more than 17% advance in the same stretch. In the Tuesday note, Baird analysts encouraged clients to be “opportunistic buyers” on the dip because while there are still near-term risks to investor sentiment, expectations seem to be in a better balance compared to earlier this year. Baird cited catalysts such as better execution in Meta AI and Llama, the company’s family of large language models. The firm added, “While mixed sentiment could persist into early 2026 amid margin uncertainty, we believe the narrative can shift more constructively through the year through a possible margin-clearing event; launch of next Llama model; updates to Meta AI; ramping WhatsApp and Threads monetization, etc.” Although analysts are sticking with Meta, they did slightly lower their price target to $815 from $820 apiece. Still, the updated price target represents a 23% upside from Monday’s close and would be a new all-time high. Like Baird, we’re optimistic on Meta’s AI ambitions — and that’s why we stepped in to buy more Meta shares for the first time in three years last month during its pullback. The Facebook parent has poached top AI talent , giving the company’s TBD Labs, which oversees its large language models, an entire roster of world-class engineers. Meta also reportedly plans to make cuts to its metaverse unit, which should give the company more flexibility to put capital into faster-growing areas such as generative AI. The Club has a price target of $825 on the stock. Up next: There are no big earnings reports this evening. On the economic date front, initial jobless claims are out Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. ET. The New York Stock Exchange will close at 1 p.m. ET for Christmas Eve, and will be closed entirely on Christmas Day on Thursday. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. 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A silicon wafer with chips etched into is seen as U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris tours a site where Applied Materials plans to build a research facility, in Sunnyvale, California, U.S., May 22, 2023.
Pool | Reuters
The U.S. will increase tariffs on Chinese semiconductor imports in June 2027, at a rate to be determined at least a month in advance, the Trump administration said in a Federal Register filing on Tuesday.
But in the meantime, the initial tariff rate on semiconductor imports from China will be zero for 18 months, according to the filing from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
As part of an investigation that kicked off a year ago, the agency found that China is engaging in unfair trade practices in the industry.
“For decades, China has targeted the semiconductor industry for dominance and has employed increasingly aggressive and sweeping non-market policies and practices in pursuing dominance of the sector,” the office said in the filing.
The decision to delay new tariffs for at least 18 months signals that the Trump administration is seeking to cool any trade hostilities between the U.S. and China.
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Additional tariffs could also become a bargaining chip if future talks break down.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached a truce in the so-called trade war in October, as part of a deal that included the U.S. slashing some tariffs and China allowing exports of rare earth metals.
The USTR’s Tuesday filing states that tariffs will increase on June 23, 2027.
The notice is the next step in a process focusing on older chips that started during the Biden administration under Section 301 of the Trade Act.
The new 2027 date gives clarity to American firms that have said they are closely watching how U.S. tariffs could affect their businesses or supply chains.
The tariffs are separate from other duties threatened by the Trump administration on Chinese chip imports under Section 232 of the law.