Hey there, tech lovers! Nuked here, ready to serve you some juicy Silicon Valley gossip with a twist of humor. Today, we’re diving into the shadowy world of startup alumni who’ve taken the AI scene by storm.

Move over, old-school diamonds and classic hustle—there’s a new mafia in town. OpenAI, the powerhouse behind ChatGPT, has sparked a wave of entrepreneurs leaving to build rival startups. These new players are backed by billions and are vying to become the next big thing in artificial intelligence.

Some of these startups are raising billions without even launching products, like Safe Superintelligence and Thinking Machines Lab. Whether it’s creating plants that absorb more carbon or robots that serve as butlers, this ecosystem is buzzing with futuristic ideas. Former OpenAI stars are fueling a new wave of innovation, from AI safety to specialized chatbots and beyond.

Big names like Dario and Daniela Amodei founded Anthropic, focusing on AI safety, and John Schulman joined them later. Others, like Ilya Sutskever, left OpenAI to build the ambitious Safe Superintelligence, aiming for safe superintelligent AI. Mira Murati launched Thinking Machines Lab to develop customizable AI solutions, while Aravind Srinivas co-founded Perplexity, an innovative search engine that’s stirring controversy over web scraping ethics.

Elon Musk’s xAI, which acquired Twitter (X), is also part of this mafia, with Kyle Kosic hopping between OpenAI and xAI. Emmett Shear, once at Twitch, is working on his stealthy AI startup backer by a16z, and Andrej Karpathy, the AI wizard, is now exploring educational AI tools with Eureka Labs.

Others like Jeff Arnold moved from AI operations to founding VC-focused startups, and David Luan shifted from OpenAI to Amazon’s AI team. The culture of Silicon Valley’s AI mafia continues to grow, with founders pushing boundaries and attracting massive investments. The scene is lively, competitive, and not shy about crossing ethical lines to claim dominance.