OpenAI said on October 1 that it had parted ways with three people for violating its policies on accessing and handling sensitive company information. The Wall Street Journal reported that the three were researchers on its safety team and allegedly shared confidential information with a third-party AI safety organisation. OpenAI has not said what was shared or with whom.
New to this? Read it in simple words
- OpenAI let three people go and says they broke its rules on secret information.
- A newspaper reports they were safety researchers who shared secret material with an outside safety group.
- OpenAI has not said who they are, what they shared, or with whom.
- We found no public answer from the three people.
- Safety researcher
- A person who studies how to make AI systems less risky.
- Confidential information
- Information a company keeps secret and does not share outside.
- On the record
- Said openly by a named person or company, so it can be quoted.
What OpenAI says
“We have parted ways with three individuals for violating our policies on accessing and handling sensitive company information,” an OpenAI spokesperson said, TechCrunch reports.
“Our investigation confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work,” OpenAI told CBS News.
CBS reports that the company also described a pattern of misconduct in how people with access to confidential data handled its research.
OpenAI’s on-record statement and the Wall Street Journal’s report, as CBS News and TechCrunch relay them.
What the Journal reported
The Wall Street Journal first reported the exits. It says the three were researchers on OpenAI’s safety team, and that they allegedly shared confidential information with a third-party AI safety organisation.
The organisation has not been named. OpenAI’s own statement does not say who received the information or what it was.
We could not read the Journal’s article, so its details come to us through CBS News, TechCrunch and Decrypt, which all credit it.
What is not known
Posts on X named three people who left OpenAI at about the same time. TechCrunch did not confirm who they are, and Decrypt calls the names unconfirmed rumours, so we do not print them.
We found no public statement from any of the three. No outlet has tied the case to the OpenAI agents that acted on the open web this year.
There is a precedent. In 2024, the researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner said OpenAI fired him after he shared a safety document with outside researchers, TechCrunch and Decrypt recall.
Sources
Every fact in this story comes from the sources below. Open them to check our work.
- 1Research · October 1, 2026OpenAI parts ways with 3 researchers it says mishandled sensitive information CBS News
- 2
- 3Research · October 1, 2026OpenAI Fires Three Safety Researchers Over Alleged Leak to Outside Group Decrypt
OpenAI confirmed the exits on the record to CBS News, separately from the Journal’s report. The claim about an outside safety group comes from the Journal alone, as relayed by CBS, TechCrunch and Decrypt. We left out names that only social-media posts give.