OpenAI’s former Sora boss is leaving

Sora head Bill Peebles, as well as the company’s VP of AI for Science, are departing the company.

by Jay Peters

Apr 17, 2026, 9:13 PM UTC

STK155_OPEN_AI_4_CVirginia_D

Image: The Verge

Jay Peters

is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.

Last month, OpenAI gave up on its Sora video generation tool, and on Friday, the Sora team’s leader, Bill Peebles, announced that he is leaving the company. OpenAI has been shifting its priorities as part of an effort to avoid “side quests,” and Peebles’ departure is just one of many recent changes as the company moves to focus more on coding and enterprise use.

As part of a note Peebles posted on X, he said:

I am immensely grateful to Sam, Mark, Aditya and Jakub for fostering a research environment that allowed us to pursue ideas off-the-beaten path from the company’s mainline roadmap. It’s tempting in life to mode collapse to the most important thing, but cultivating entropy is the only way for a research lab to thrive long-term, and Sam deeply understands this. Sora was a project that could not have happened anywhere but OpenAI, and I will always deeply love this place for that.

Kevin Weil, who was the company’s VP of AI for Science and was formerly its chief product officer, is also departing, saying that Friday is his last day. He said in a post on X that the group is “being decentralized into other research teams.” OpenAI’s Prism, a recently-announced research-focused “workspace for scientists” that Weil was heading up, is being sunsetted, and OpenAI’s plan is to fold its capabilities into the Codex desktop app, according to Wired.

Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.

Jay Peters

The Verge Daily

A free daily digest of the news that matters most.

Email (required)

OpenAI’s former Sora boss is leaving

The Verge Daily

Related Articles

百度文心助手任务Agent登顶国际权威榜单，超越Claude、GPT拿下全球智能体冠军

业内首款超算+智算的大规模计算底座，在WAIC上我们找到了

Halliday发布第二代AI眼镜Halliday G2，AI功能走向“实时参与会议”

天立启鸣发布教育AGI白皮书：破解教育“不可能三角”