The OpenAI Mafia: 15 Notable Startups Founded by Former Employees
Silicon Valley has a new tech powerhouse: the OpenAI mafia. As OpenAI skyrocketed to a $300 billion valuation, a wave of its alumni have ventured out to build startups of their own, attracting billions in investments and redefining the future of AI and technology.
Prominent examples include:
- Anthropic: Founded by Dario and Daniela Amodei alongside John Schulman, focusing on AI safety and now OpenAI’s top rival at a $61.5 billion valuation.
- Safe Superintelligence: Ilya Sutskever’s stealthy venture aiming to develop a safe superintelligence, with a $32 billion valuation despite no launched product.
- Thinking Machines Lab: Led by former CTO Mira Murati, the company is building customizable, capable AI and is reportedly raising $2 billion.
- Perplexity: Aravind Srinivas’ AI search engine has caught major investors like Jeff Bezos, reaching an $18 billion valuation.
- xAI: Co-founded by Kyle Kosic and now owner of X (formerly Twitter), valued at $113 billion.
- Stem AI: Emmett Shear’s stealth project post-OpenAI leadership tenure, backed by Andreessen Horowitz.
- Eureka Labs: Andrej Karpathy’s AI edtech startup focused on building AI teaching assistants.
- Pilot: Founded by Jeff Arnold, a startup revolutionizing accounting for startups.
- Adept AI Labs: David Luan’s startup creating AI tools for workers, later acquired into Amazon’s AI division.
- Cresta: Tim Shi’s AI-powered contact center solutions, backed by top Silicon Valley VCs.
- Covariant: Pieter Abbeel, Peter Chen, and Rocky Duan’s robotic AI startup now heavily aligned with Amazon.
- Living Carbon: Maddie Hall’s climate tech venture using genetically engineered plants to fight carbon emissions.
- Prosper Robotics: Shariq Hashme’s startup designing robot butlers for homes.
- Daedalus: Jonas Schneider’s company specializing in AI-powered advanced manufacturing.
- Kindo: Founded by Margaret Jennings, offering enterprise AI chatbots before Jennings moved to French AI leader Mistral.
This new generation of founders is pushing the limits of AI, robotics, and sustainable tech, mirroring the influence once wielded by the PayPal mafia. As the sector grows, many of these startups could become the next giants shaping the global tech landscape.
