Vietnamese AI researcher leaves OpenAI due to 'burnout', returns to home country

Dr. Pham Hy Hieu, named in Forbes Vietnam's 30 Under 30 List 2020, has decided to leave artificial intelligence giant OpenAI due to "burnout", saying he will return to Vietnam with his family.

“I have made the difficult decision to leave @OpenAI,” the 34-year old researcher wrote on social media platform X on February 26, adding that working at OpenAI and previously at billionaire Elon Musk’s xAI had been a “once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

“At these companies, I have helped creating extremely intelligent entities that will meaningfully improve our lives. The work makes me proud,” he said.

“But the intensive work came with a price. I cannot believe I would say this one day, but I am burnt out,” he wrote, explaining “All the mental health deteriorating that I used to scoff at is real, miserable, scary, and dangerous.”

Hieu said he would step back from frontier AI labs and return to Vietnam with his family to "search for a cure" for his conditions and "try something new.”

Forbes Vietnam's 30 Under 30 is an annual list identifying 30 of the most promising young leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators under age 30 who are transforming industries like technology, business, entertainment, and social activities.

Hieu graduated with honors in computer science from Stanford University in 2015 and later completed a doctorate in machine learning and computational linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University (2017-2021).

In July 2024, Hieu signed a contract with xAI and was assigned technical tasks before his official start date. At the company, he was involved in developing the Grok-3 model.

His career also included roles at Google Brain, the National University of Singapore, and startup Augment Computing.

In May 2025, he was invited to participate in a visiting professor program at Vietnam National University-Ho Chi Minh City, where he taught and helped advance AI research in Vietnam.