Allen Institute for AI CEO Ali Farhadi steps down as nonprofit navigates shifting AI landscape

Ali Farhadi is stepping down as the CEO of the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2), after a two-and-a-half-year tenure that brought growing recognition to the Seattle-based nonprofit research institute as a key player in the world of open-source artificial intelligence. He will be replaced on an interim basis by Peter Clark, a founding member of Ai2, as the board begins a search for a permanent successor. Clark served in the same interim role after the departure of founding CEO Oren Etzioni in 2022. Farhadi’s last day is Friday. The announcement was made late Thursday morning to the roughly 200-person Ai2 team, said board chair Bill Hilf, in an interview with GeekWire shortly after the internal meeting. Hilf said he and Farhadi had been discussing the transition for about six months. Farhadi wants to pursue his research ambitions at the frontier of large-scale AI, where for-profit companies are spending billions of dollars a year on computing horsepower, Hilf said. Asked why Farhadi couldn’t pursue that work at Ai2, Hilf cited the financial realities of competing against tech giants at the largest scale of AI model development as a nonprofit. He said the board has to weigh whether philanthropic dollars are best spent trying to keep pace. “The cost to do extreme-scale open model research is extraordinary,” Hilf said, adding that it’s “really hard to do extreme-scale model work inside of a nonprofit.” Hilf said Ai2 will continue its work on areas including OLMo, its open-source AI models, while also citing its focus on applying AI to real-world problems in areas such as climate, conservation, and health. A computer vision specialist, Farhadi had deep roots at Ai2. He joined the institute in 2015 and co-founded the Ai2 spinout Xnor.ai, which Apple acquired in 2020 for an estimated $200 million in one of the institute’s biggest commercial successes. He led machine learning efforts at Apple before returning to lead Ai2 in July 2023. Farhadi has not said where he might go next. He is expected to remain a professor at the University of Washington’s Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. “Leading Ai2 has been a true privilege,” Farhadi said in a statement, citing the Ai2 team’s release of more than 300 models and artifacts with more than 33 million downloads. He pointed to advances in health, science, and environmental research, and cited investments from the NSF and Nvidia and initiatives such as the Cancer AI Alliance as results of its impact. “Ai2 is entering its next phase from a position of real strength, with growing global adoption of our work and an extraordinary team driving innovation,” Farhadi said. “I’m excited to see them continue pushing the boundaries of what AI can achieve for humanity.” Farhadi will leave the Ai2 board. Chief Operating Officer Sophie Lebrecht is also leaving. Lebrecht worked alongside Farhadi at Xnor.ai and at Apple before joining him at Ai2. Hilf noted that all programs planned for 2026 are fully funded and that Farhadi wanted to ensure that stability before stepping down. Existing commitments are not affected, Hilf said, including a $152 million, five-year initiative backed by the National Science Foundation and Nvidia to build open AI models for scientific research, and Ai2’s role in the Cancer AI Alliance led by Seattle’s Fred Hutch Cancer Center. Ai2 was founded in 2014 by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. It receives major funding from the Foundation for Science and Technology, an Allen entity. Jody Allen is on the Ai2 board. Clark, the interim CEO, said in a statement that he is committed to a smooth transition. “Our mission remains unchanged: advancing AI research and engineering for the common good, and turning our open breakthroughs into lasting, real-world impact,” he said. Hilf said the board is looking for a new CEO who combines scientific depth with nonprofit management experience and a passion for open science, acknowledging that the combination is rare and that building an open community is harder than people think.