Move over, PayPal mafia: There’s a brand new tech mafia in Silicon Valley. As the startup behind ChatGPT, OpenAI is arguably the largest AI participant on the town. Its meteoric rise to a $300 billion valuation has spurred many workers to go away the AI big to create startups of their very own.
The hype round OpenAI is so excessive that a few of these startups, like Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence and Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab, have been capable of elevate billions of {dollars} with out even launching a product.
But there are many different startups within the OpenAI mafia ecosystem. These vary from AI search big Perplexity to xAI, the brand new proprietor of X (previously Twitter.) There’s additionally smaller outfits with some futuristic plans, like Living Carbon, which is creating vegetation that suck extra carbon out of the ambiance, or Prosper Robotics, which is constructing a robotic butler.
Below is a roundup of essentially the most notable startups based by OpenAI alumni.
Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei, and John Schulman — Anthropic
Siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei left OpenAI in 2021 to type their very own startup, San Francisco-based Anthropic, that has lengthy touted a give attention to AI security. Later, OpenAI co-founder John Schulman joined Anthropic in 2024, pledging to construct a “protected AGI.” OpenAI reportedly stays a number of occasions bigger than Anthropic by income ($3.7 billion in comparison with $1 billion for 2024, The Information reported). But Anthropic has shortly grown to turn out to be OpenAI’s largest rival and was valued at $61.5 billion in March 2025.
Ilya Sutskever — Safe Superintelligence
OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever left OpenAI in May 2024 after he was reportedly a part of a failed effort to switch CEO Sam Altman. Shortly afterward, he co-founded Safe Superintelligence, or SSI, with “one objective and one product: a protected superintelligence,” he says. Details about what precisely the startup is as much as are scant: It has no product and no income but. But buyers are clamoring for a chunk anyway, and it’s been capable of elevate $2 billion, with its newest valuation reportedly rising to $32 billion this month. SSI relies in Palo Alto, California, and Tel Aviv, Israel.
Mira Murati — Thinking Machines Lab
Mira Murati, OpenAI’s CTO, left OpenAI final yr to discovered her personal firm, Thinking Machines Lab, which emerged from stealth in February 2025, saying (fairly vaguely) that it’ll construct AI that’s extra “customizable” and “succesful.” The San Francisco AI startup has no product or income however loads of former high OpenAI researchers and is reportedly within the means of elevating an enormous $2 billion seed spherical valuing it at $10 billion, minimal.
Aravind Srinivas — Perplexity
Aravind Srinivas labored as a analysis scientist at OpenAI for a yr till 2022, when he left the corporate to co-found AI search engine Perplexity. His startup has attracted a string of high-profile buyers like Jeff Bezos and Nvidia, though it’s additionally induced controversy over alleged unethical net scraping. Perplexity, which relies in San Francisco, is presently elevating about $1 billion at an $18 billion valuation as of March 2025.
Kyle Kosic — xAI
Kyle Kosic left OpenAI in 2023 to turn out to be a co-founder and infrastructure lead of xAI, Elon Musk’s AI startup that provides a rival chatbot, Grok. In 2024, nevertheless, he hopped again to OpenAI. Palo Alto-based xAI lately acquired X, previously Twitter, and gave the mixed entity a valuation of $113 billion. The all-stock transaction raised some eyebrows however is an efficient deal should you’re betting on Musk’s empire.
Emmett Shear — Stem AI
Emmett Shear is the previous CEO of Twitch who was OpenAI’s interim CEO in November 2023 for a couple of days earlier than Sam Altman rejoined the corporate. Shear is engaged on his personal stealth startup, known as Stem AI, TechCrunch revealed in 2024. Although there are few particulars about its exercise and fundraising to this point, it has already attracted funding from Andreessen Horowitz.
Andrej Karpathy — Eureka Labs
Computer imaginative and prescient professional Andrej Karpathy was a founding member and analysis scientist at OpenAI, leaving the startup to hitch Tesla in 2017 to steer its autopilot program. Karpathy can be well-known for his YouTube movies explaining core AI ideas. He left Tesla in 2024 to discovered his personal training know-how startup, Eureka Labs, a San Francisco-based startup that’s constructing AI educating 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 targeted initially on doing accounting for startups, final raised a $100 million Series 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 launch a VC fund.
David Luan — Adept AI Labs
David Luan was 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 instruments for workers. The startup final raised $350 million at a valuation north of $1 billion in 2023, however Luan left in late 2024 to supervise Amazon’s AI brokers lab after Amazon employed Adept’s founders.
Tim Shi — Cresta
Tim Shi was an early member of OpenAI’s workforce, the place he targeted on constructing protected synthetic normal intelligence (AGI), in line with his LinkedIn profile. He labored at OpenAI for a yr in 2017 however left to discovered Cresta, a San Francisco-based AI contact heart startup that has raised over $270 million from VCs like Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and others, in line with a press launch.
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 three of the Covariant founders and a couple of quarter of its employees. The quasi acquisition was considered by some as a part of a broader pattern of Big Tech making an attempt to keep away from antitrust scrutiny.
Maddie Hall — Living Carbon
Maddie Hall labored on “particular initiatives” at OpenAI however left in 2019 to co-found Living Carbon, a San Francisco-based startup that goals to create engineered vegetation that may suck extra carbon out of the sky to battle local weather change. Living Carbon raised a $21 million Series A spherical in 2023, bringing its whole funding till then to $36 million, in line with a press launch.
Shariq Hashme — Prosper Robotics
Shariq Hashme labored for OpenAI for 9 months in 2017 on a bot that might play the favored online game Dota, per 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 engaged on a robotic butler for individuals’s houses, a scorching pattern in robotics that different gamers like Norway’s 1X and Texas-based Apptronik are additionally engaged on.
Jonas Schneider — Daedalus
Jonas Schneider led OpenAI’s software program engineering for robotics workforce however left in 2019 to co-found Daedalus, which builds superior factories for precision parts. The San Francisco-based startup raised a $21 million Series A final yr 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 funding, final elevating a $20.6 million Series A in 2024. Jennings left Kindo in 2024 to move product and analysis at French AI startup Mistral, in line with her LinkedIn profile.
