Joshua Achiam, OpenAI's chief futurist, has told colleagues he will leave the company later this month after nearly nine years, according to a staff note obtained by WIRED. Achiam, a long-standing defender of OpenAI's safety-focused mission, said his departure was not prompted by any specific reason but was something he had been considering for a while, adding that he believed the company's mission could now be advanced from outside a frontier lab. His exit matters because his role sat at the intersection of OpenAI's AI safety and policy teams, studying the potential harms and benefits of artificial intelligence.

Achiam joined OpenAI as an intern in 2017 and became a research scientist focused on AI safety, later leading a "mission alignment team" formed in 2024 and disbanded in February, after which he became chief futurist. OpenAI has not said whether the role will be filled, though former White House AI adviser Dean Ball has just joined as head of strategic futures and will briefly overlap with him. Achiam is the latest safety-focused leader to leave as OpenAI prepares to go public, following figures such as Jan Leike, Miles Brundage, Steven Adler and Andrea Vallone.