This is pretty wild. Considering the ethical implications of AI as an aside, what this does is effectively shatter the silo OpenAI had around their product. These are the core people who brought the vision into life. They built the road maps and can fully replicate the programs that developed what has become the most transformative AI tool the world has yet seen.
Open AI has had a real moat around their tools. Simply, they are far superior to anything anyone else could even dream of competitively offering. Its real AI and it really works (ymmv). Keeping this team on the team keeps them from building competitive AI products elsewhere.
Its a great thing that this happened. It breaks the moat. I can guarantee that every significant executive on that team is getting flooded with offers to build competitive products elsewhere.