Kevin Weil and Bill Peebles exit OpenAI as company continues to shed ‘side quests’

OpenAI is losing 2 of the architects of its astir ambitious moonshots. Kevin Weil, who led the company’s subject probe initiative, and Bill Peebles, the researcher down AI video instrumentality Sora, some announced their departures connected Friday. The exits travel arsenic OpenAI consolidates astir endeavor AI and its forthcoming “superapp.”

The departures travel OpenAI’s determination to chopped backmost connected “side quests,” including customer-facing bets similar Sora and OpenAI for Science. Sora, which was losing an estimated $1 cardinal per day successful compute costs, was shut down past month.

OpenAI for Science was the interior probe radical down Prism, an AI-powered level that promised to accelerate technological discovery. It’s being absorbed into “other probe teams,” according to Weil’s social media post announcing the news.

“It’s been a mind-expanding 2 years, from Chief Product Officer to joining the probe squad and starting OpenAI for Science,” Weil wrote. “Accelerating subject volition beryllium 1 of the astir stunningly affirmative outcomes of our propulsion to AGI.”

The squad had a abbreviated and bumpy roadworthy aft its ceremonial announcement successful October 2025. Weil deleted a tweet claiming GPT-5 had solved 10 antecedently unsolved Erdős mathematical problems, but that assertion fell isolated instantly erstwhile the mathematician who runs the website erdosproblems.com called it out.

Weil’s departure comes a time aft his squad released GPT-Rosalind, a caller exemplary to accelerate beingness sciences probe and cause discovery.

In a social post announcing his departure, Peebles credited Sora with igniting a “huge magnitude of concern successful video crossed the industry,” and argued that the benignant of probe that produced the video instrumentality requires abstraction distant from the company’s mainline roadmap.

“Cultivating entropy is the lone mode for a probe laboratory to thrive long-term,” helium wrote.