For a company to be as successful as OpenAI, two people won't cut it. OpenAI arguably has the best ML talent at the moment. Talent attracts talent. People come for Sutskever, Karpathy, and alike -- not for Altman or Brockman.

Pachocki, Director of Research, just quit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38316378

Real chance of an exodus, which will be an utter shame.

according to one of the researchers who left, Simon, the engineering piece is more important. and many of their best engineers leading GPT5 and ChatGPT left (Brockman, Pachocki, and Simon)

Who is "Simon"? Link to source re; departure?

seems to be Szymon Sidor – https://archive.is/Ij684#selection-595.304-595.316

Money also attracts talent. An OpenAI competitor led by the people who led OpenAI to its leading position should be able to raise a lot of money.

Money attracts talent as well. Altman knows how to raise money.

2018 NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/technology/artificial-int...

Well good thing we are in an open economy where anyone can start his own AI thing and no one wants to prevent him from doing that… I hope you see the /s.

Literally ask around for a billion dollars, how hard can it be?