Microsoft announced on Monday that Sebastien Bubeck, its vice president of GenAI research, will be leaving the company to join OpenAI, the organization behind ChatGPT.

The specific position Bubeck will take at the Microsoft-supported AI startup remains uncertain.

"Sebastian has chosen to depart from Microsoft to advance his efforts in developing AGI," a Microsoft spokesperson stated, expressing the company's eagerness to maintain a collaborative relationship with Bubeck in his new role at OpenAI.

Bubeck has not yet responded to a request for confirmation from Reuters.

Most of Bubeck's coauthors, who collaborated on a research paper regarding Microsoft's Phi LLMs—models that are smaller than conventional large language models—are still with Microsoft and intend to continue their work on these models, as reported by the Information, which was the first to disclose Bubeck's departure.

This change comes amid a series of exits from OpenAI, including that of former chief technology officer Mira Murati in September.

CEO Sam Altman has refuted any connection between these departures and a potential restructuring of the organization.