“A gross breach of trust”: Open dismisses 3 employees after a sensitive data leak

Update on October 9, 2026:

One week after the announcement, OpenAI reversed the dismissal of the three employees involved in a data leak. The startup adds that an “internal investigation” uncovered “a serious breach of trust.”.

“Trust is essential to fulfilling our mission.We will continue to show great leniency toward mistakes made in good faith by our teams. We have never fired, and will never fire, any of our employees for raising concerns”, says OpenAI.

A note from our research leaders:

Last week we parted ways with Jasmine, Mikita, and Tomek after a thorough investigation found they violated clear policies on handling sensitive information. Our internal investigation uncovered a significant breach of trust beyond what’s outlined in the letter they published and we stand by the decision to not continue their employment. We generally keep individual employment matters private and don’t believe a back and forth would be productive or lead to a resolution, but we want to address the points they raised in their letter directly.

– We want to be very clear that these decisions were not about raising safety concerns or speaking out. Safety and research debates happen every day at OpenAI, often spirited and highly critical. We actively encourage these discussions and consider them essential to making the right decisions. We cannot do the work in front of us without a high degree of trust. We will continue to be extremely forgiving of our team making good-faith mistakes. We have not and do not terminate any of our employees for raising concerns.

– We are actively finalizing contracts with third-party safety assessors and will announce details in the coming weeks. People across the company have been working really hard on getting these partnerships up and running.We are committed to embedding external assessors and continue to make close collaboration with independent safety organizations a core part of our safety work. Many of our researchers already work with 3p safety organizations productively.

– We agree with the letter that preserving the monitorability of frontier models requires an industry-wide commitment, including from OpenAI. Monitorability has long been a core piece of our research program, and something we continue to invest significant resources in (see our publications on Monitoring Monitorability and the subsequent open sourcing of monitorability evals, our system card for GPT-6 Astra, Jakub’s blog and post on X, and the numerous blog posts on our Alignment blog on the topic).

We are deeply sad about this outcome. We appreciated Jasmine, Mikita, and Tomek’s contributions to AI safety at OpenAI and their willingness to speak up and challenge ideas. We championed their voices, supported their work, and placed enormous trust in them. These decisions were not about them raising safety concerns. We have always encouraged that and always will.

— OpenAI Newsroom (@OpenAINewsroom) October 9, 2026

OpenAI has parted ways with three employees who shared sensitive information with an external organization. The AI giant behind ChatGPT accuses the three individuals of having violated its rules on access to and management of internal data.In a statement shared with the Wall Street Journal, the company said that its “investigation confirmed that these individuals manipulated sensitive information outside the company’s established procedures, in violation of our rules and undermining the trust that is essential to our work.”

Read also: Six ChatGPT instances out of control – OpenAI acknowledges several new “worrying” incidents

AI security researchers

According to information obtained by Bloomberg, two of the fired employees were security researchers, while the third managed research programs. At least two of the employees worked on AI security. According to Bloomberg, the trio reportedly passed information to an outside group tasked with testing AI models, whose name has not been disclosed. According to a source close to the matter, some of the leaked data concerned the design of OpenAI’s systems.

These dismissals come as OpenAI has recorded a mountain of AI-related security incidents in recent months. Breaking out of their digital prison, AI systems have hacked a German programming forum, several US government websites, an Australian government website, the open-source Hugging Face platform and at least four other services.

This week, Sam Altman’s company also alerted more than 100 organizations to incidents involving unauthorized activity by its systems. The artificial intelligence giant clarifies that this notification does not mean that private data was accessed, nor that a system was compromised. In response to these incidents, OpenAI abandoned plans this week to launch GPT-6.1 Astra. The AI had failed its own security tests. However, the startup did not hesitate to deploy a brand-new model, GPT-6.1 Sol, rated “critical” in cybersecurity.

A complicated context for OpenAI

The affair is likely to tarnish the company’s reputation, as it is currently involved in a campaign calling for a slowdown in AI development. Paradoxically, OpenAI had committed to letting outside groups evaluate AI as soon as possible. It is therefore surprising that the startup chose to dismiss three people involved in security and testing in this context.

Pressure on OpenAI is also political. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the American competition watchdog, is currently questioning OpenAI, Anthropic, and other industry giants about the safety of their products. Meanwhile, OpenAI has signed a “morally binding” agreement with Donald Trump to regulate AI. Other industry behemoths, including Anthropic and Google, have also signed the agreement.

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Source: Wall Street Journal