Barret Zoph has departed OpenAI for the second time in less than two years, ending a five-month stint as the company's head of enterprise AI sales. OpenAI confirmed his exit, and Zoph posted a farewell message in the company's Slack channels. The departure comes at a sensitive moment for OpenAI, which has publicly committed to doubling down on enterprise revenue and coding as core business drivers ahead of a planned IPO, stepping away from what executives have called "side quests."
Zoph's return to OpenAI in mid-January 2026 was itself a quick turnaround. He had originally left the company in fall 2024 to join former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati at her new venture, Thinking Machines Lab, where he served as co-founder and CTO. That role ended abruptly in January 2026 amid reports of alleged misconduct tied to an undisclosed relationship with a colleague. Murati announced on X at the time that the company had "parted ways" with Zoph and that he would be replaced as CTO. Within weeks of his exit from Thinking Machines, OpenAI brought him back to lead its enterprise push.
The relationship between OpenAI and Thinking Machines Lab remains fraught. Murati, who briefly served as OpenAI's CEO during Sam Altman's November 2023 ouster before he was reinstated, testified during a recent OpenAI trial that she could not trust everything Altman said. She left OpenAI in September 2024 to launch Thinking Machines, and the two organizations have continued to overlap in talent and ambitions ever since. Zoph's rapid moves between the two companies highlight just how porous the boundaries between them have become.