Recently, I was thinking about all the new AI startups that are in the news pretty much constantly. Many are founded by Open AI alumni. It turns out OpenAI isn’t just a leading AI company. It’s also become Silicon Valley’s newest “mafia,” much like the OG PayPal network. Over the past few years, about 70 alumni have ventured out to launch 30+ startups, covering AI safety, search, robotics, edtech, climate tech, enterprise tools… You name it.

Some examples:

  • Anthropic (natch) (Dario and Daniela Amodei and John Schulman) - tackling next‑gen safety challenges.
  • Safe Superintelligence (Ilya Sutskever) - also tackling safety challenges.
  • Perplexity (Aravind Srinivas) - AI‑powered search.
  • Thinking Machines Lab (Mira Murati) - “customizable” AI.
  • Cleanlab (Anish Athalye), Symbiote AI (Taehoon Kim) and Aidence (Tim Salimans) - basically a grab bag of applications for AI: data‑quality tooling to real‑time 3D avatars to medical imaging.
  • Several more, such as Covariant, Prosper Robotics, Living Carbon, Daedalus, Eureka Labs , Pilot, Cresta, and Adept AI Labs.

Essentially, OpenAI’s blend of mission‑driven R&D, a collaborative culture, and early exposure to bleeding edge models is effectively acting as a de facto incubator. No formal accelerator needed.

The “OpenAI Mafia” is a real thing, and its ripple effects are definitely being felt. Watching these founders go from colleagues to competitors is pretty exciting. And frankly tough to keep up with. But it’s cool to watch it all unfold.

Sources: techcrunch.com/2025/04/2… analyticsindiamag.com/global-te…