OpenAI described the dissolution of its Mission Alignment team, in February 2026, as a "routine reorganisation."
The Bureau of Organizational Continuity agrees. It was routine. The Bureau has documentation.
What follows is the institutional performance record for each of OpenAI's safety bodies from the period July 2023 through February 2026. The record is presented in the standard review format. Ratings reflect outcomes against stated mandate. Closures are documented as filed.
Performance Review — Superalignment Team
Period of Service: July 2023 – May 2024 (approximately 10 months) Staff at Dissolution: approximately 25 employees Rating: Completed
Mandate on Formation
In July 2023, OpenAI publicly announced the Superalignment team, co-led by Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike. The stated objective: solve the technical problems of superintelligent AI alignment within four years. OpenAI committed, at formation, to provide the team with 20 percent of its then-available computing resources.
Performance Against Mandate
The compute allocation was never delivered. According to reporting by Fortune, drawing on half a dozen sources, the team's allocation "never came close to the promised 20% threshold." Requests for GPU access were repeatedly denied. Jan Leike later confirmed in his resignation statement that "my team has been sailing against the wind. Sometimes we were struggling for compute."
The team was dissolved in May 2024, less than a year after formation, following the departures of Sutskever and Leike. Its approximately 25 members were reassigned to other parts of the company.
Upon resignation, Leike wrote on X: "safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products." The Bureau records this as exit feedback and files it accordingly.
Disposition of Senior Leadership: Ilya Sutskever departed to found Safe Superintelligence Inc. Jan Leike departed to join Anthropic.
Disposition of Team: Absorbed. Absorbing unit not specified in available records.
BUREAU NOTE: OpenAI promised the Superalignment team 20 percent of its computing resources and delivered less. The team was then dissolved. The compute was promised in public. The compute was withheld in practice. The team was dissolved. The Bureau files "sailing against the wind" and "routine reorganisation" as two descriptions of the same sequence, written for different audiences.
Performance Review — AGI Readiness Advisory
Period of Service: Formed prior to 2024, dissolved October 2024 Staff at Dissolution: advisory function; one named senior advisor Rating: Completed
Mandate on Formation
The AGI Readiness advisory was formed to counsel OpenAI on its institutional capacity to handle artificial general intelligence — AI that could potentially equal or surpass human capability. Its senior advisor was Miles Brundage, a long-serving OpenAI researcher.
Performance Against Mandate
The advisory was dissolved in October 2024. Brundage resigned simultaneously. In a public statement, he wrote that "neither OpenAI nor any other frontier lab is ready, and the world is also not ready."
This was the second safety-focused function dissolved in 2024. The team's members were redistributed among other OpenAI divisions.
Disposition of Senior Leadership: Miles Brundage departed to an independent nonprofit.
Disposition of Team: Redistributed. Receiving divisions not specified in available records.
BUREAU NOTE: The Bureau's records show that the AGI Readiness function assessed readiness and found it absent. The Bureau's records also show that the function was then closed. The Bureau does not propose a causal relationship. It proposes a sequence.
Performance Review — Mission Alignment Team
Period of Service: September 2024 – February 2026 (16 months) Staff at Dissolution: 6–7 employees Rating: Completed
Mandate on Formation
The Mission Alignment team was formed in September 2024 to keep OpenAI's AI models "safe, trustworthy, and aligned with human values." Its head was Joshua Achiam, an OpenAI researcher of more than eight years' tenure.
The team was announced by Sam Altman on September 25, 2024 — the same day that then-CTO Mira Murati announced her sudden departure.
Performance Against Mandate
During the Mission Alignment team's 16-month operational period, OpenAI filed its 2024 IRS Form 990. That document — the organisation's own federal tax filing — removed the word "safely" from OpenAI's mission statement. The prior stated mission was "to build general-purpose artificial intelligence that safely benefits humanity." The updated mission: "to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity." The word "safely" had appeared in every prior filing. The removal coincided with OpenAI's restructuring into a for-profit public benefit corporation, in which the nonprofit entity that was originally established to enforce safety oversight now controls approximately 26 percent of the company.
The Mission Alignment team was then dissolved in February 2026, in what OpenAI described as a routine reorganisation. An OpenAI spokesperson, asked where the team's six to seven employees had been reassigned, said they could not say exactly.
The team completed its work.
The mission is aligned.
Disposition of Senior Leadership: Joshua Achiam was appointed Chief Futurist.
Disposition of Team: Redistributed. Receiving divisions not specified in available records.
Personnel Record — Chief Futurist
Title Effective: February 2026 Reporting Line: Not disclosed Institutional Team: None announced Defined Deliverables: None
In February 2026, OpenAI published an announcement in its Global Affairs Substack introducing Joshua Achiam as Chief Futurist. His stated goal is "to support OpenAI's mission by studying how the world will change in response to AI, AGI, and beyond." The announcement describes his work as "studying," "sharing ideas," and "engaging expert communities." He will work alongside physicist Jason Pruet. No team has been named. No reporting line has been disclosed. No institutional deliverables have been defined.
The previous three functions Achiam's appointment follows — Superalignment, AGI Readiness, Mission Alignment — each had a named mandate, a named leadership structure, and a defined institutional scope. Each was dissolved as routine procedure.
The Chief Futurist role has no mandate to dissolve. It has no institutional scope to be redistributed. It has no jurisdiction to be absorbed by another division.
The organization keeps the person. The job is now a biography entry.
BUREAU NOTE: For reference: the Mission Alignment team was formed in September 2024 to align OpenAI with its mission. OpenAI's mission was changed, formally, in the same period — in a federal tax document, the most official institutional record available. The team completed its work under the new mission. The new mission did not contain the word the team was formed to protect. The team was closed. The person was given a title that describes thinking about the future. The Bureau records all of this as a coherent sequence and notes, with appropriate institutional pride, that the paperwork is in order.
The Bureau of Organizational Continuity, Safety Succession Division, maintains performance records for all dissolved institutional functions. Files for the Superalignment team, the AGI Readiness advisory, and the Mission Alignment team are now closed and archived. The Chief Futurist file has been opened. It currently contains one page.