Joshua Achiam, OpenAI's Chief Futurist, will leave the company with July 24, 2026 as his last day, marking the departure of a central safety-research figure after nearly nine years.
Jul 7, 2026 · OpenAI
OpenAI's Chief Futurist Joshua Achiam Is Leaving After ~9 Years
A symbol of OpenAI's nonprofit mission that "AGI should benefit all of humanity," Achiam announced his exit via internal Slack. His last day: July 24, 2026 — no successor named for his AI safety and policy role.
~9
years at OpenAI, joining as an intern in 2017 at age 25
3
successive roles held, from safety researcher to Chief Futurist
0
named successors for his safety & policy role
A Nine-Year Arc Through OpenAI
2017 –
Research Scientist
AI safety; lead author of "Spinning Up in Deep RL"
→
Sep 2024 –
Head of Mission Alignment
Team dissolved in Feb 2026
→
Feb 2026 –
Chief Futurist
AI's effect on society, economy, geopolitics
Part of a wider pattern
Safety & policy leaders who have exited OpenAI
Jan Leike
Superalignment co-lead → Anthropic
Cited backdrop: restructuring tied to IPO preparations and a shrinking safety team.
His framing
Not an acrimonious break. Achiam says he will keep pursuing the AGI mission from outside a frontier lab, closing on a positive note.
The concern
Observers see a continuing outflow of safety talent — and the loss of a figure who symbolized the nonprofit mission.
The "jackass" trophy. In the May 2026 Musk v. Altman trial, Achiam recounted how Musk called him a "jackass" for raising safety concerns in 2018. Colleagues later gave him a golden donkey statue inscribed "never stop being a jackass for safety" — submitted as trial evidence.
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