Perhaps not directly, but from the very start OpenAI was considered "Elon's AI company" and people wanted to work there because they wanted to work with Elon. That had a huge effect on what kind of talent OpenAI was able to hire.

Yes, I'm aware that Ilya had much more day-to-day impact, but if you're part of the ML research community and have worked with Ilya, or heard rumors of working with Ilya, that may have had more of a negative effect...