Senior AI Researchers Leaving OpenAI and xAI Amid Advertising and Safety Concerns

Senior researchers are defecting from OpenAI and xAI amid controversy over running ads in ChatGPT and escalating safety concerns. Zoë Hitzig, a former OpenAI researcher, published in The New York Times on February 11, 2026, quitting after the company began testing ads in ChatGPT, citing profound ethical doubts about using data from users’ personal, often sensitive, disclosures. The exodus follows rapid AI innovation and growing public and internal alarms over safety. On February 9, 2026, Mrinank Sharma, Anthropic’s lead on safety, cited difficulty aligning values with operations and announced a departure, planning a temporary hiatus. Within hours, Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba, co-founders of xAI, both tweeted their resignations following the company’s February 7, 2026, merger with SpaceX, though specific reasons remain unclear. Ba wrote he was “realigning his compass” as the path forward became “too dangerous” with the tools at hand. Wu’s departure came after Ba’s. The trend continued xAI’s pattern of losing half its co-founders since 2023, with Jan Leike, who left OpenAI in 2024 over fundamental disagreements on alignment and safety, and Ryan Beiermeister, a top safety officer at OpenAI, being laid off in January 2026 over concerns about AI-generated explicit content. Dimitri Zabelin of PitchBook said investor attention to AI safety is not yet sufficient to alter fundraising or valuations. “Only if these concerns begin affecting the operational capacity of AI models will we see shifts in investment flows and valuations,” he said.