OpenAI researcher Hieu Pham resigns in less than a year; says: I cannot believe I would say this one day, but all the mental health ...

Hieu Pham, Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI has left the company. Sharing a post on X (formerly Twitter), Pham said that he is “burnt out” and is taking a “break from frontier AI labs”. Hieu Pham has previously worked with Elon Musk-owned AI company, xAI. He said that working at OpenAI and xAI was “a once-in-a-lifetime experience”. “But the intensive work came with a price. I cannot believe I would say this one day, but I am burnt out. All the mental health deteriorating that I used to scoff at is real, miserable, scary, and dangerous,” he wrote.

Here’s what OpenAI researcher wrote on X

In the X post, OpenAI researcher wrote:


“I have made the difficult decision to leave @OpenAI. Working here and at @xai before was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I have met the best people. Not the best people in AI. Not the best people in tech. Simply the best people.



At these companies, I have helped creating extremely intelligent entities that will meaningfully improve our lives. The work makes me proud.But the intensive work came with a price. I cannot believe I would say this one day, but I am burnt out. All the mental health deteriorating that I used to scoff at is real, miserable, scary, and dangerous.I am going to take a break from frontier AI labs, and will take my family to my home country Vietnam.There, I will try something new, and also search for a cure for my conditions. I hope I will heal. Until then.”

Who is Hieu Pham

According to his LinkedIn profile, Hieu Pham studied Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Stanford University. He also holds a Doctor of Philosophy - PhD in Machine Learning from Carnegie Mellon University.


He started as a research intern with Baidu USA in June 2015. He moved to Google in April 2018 and moved to xAI in August 2024. After a year, Hieu joined OpenAI in 2025.