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GM’s first ever AI chief has left the company after only eight months. Barak Turovsky, GM’s former Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, announced on his LinkedIn over the weekend that he was leaving the newly created position.
“Friends, I just wanted to share that as of today I am no longer with GM. Physical AI is just as exciting as LLMs and it was a genuine pleasure to work again with brilliant folks,” he wrote, listing some of his colleagues. “I will be taking a little sabbatical to work on some exciting new ideas.”
Prior to joining GM in March 2025, Turovsky served as a VP of AI at Cisco for two years and as head of product at Google, focusing on languages AI, for seven. Nvidia defines “physical AI,” which Turovsky referenced in his statement, as that which enables autonomous technology like self-driving cars to reason and perform complicated tasks in the real world.
Turovsky had reported to Dave Richardson, Google’s SVP of software and services engineering, who joined the company in 2023. Richardson left at the close of October, shortly after GM outlined a series of updates meant to reposition the company as a tech-heavy mobility company in which software, AI and autonomy are expected to play a major role. These updates were announced a the GM Forward event in October, at which Richardson, alongside other leaders, teased the launch of GM’s next-generation electrical architecture for so-called “software defined vehicles.” Both Richardson and Turovsky chose to leave the company, the Detroit Free Press reported. CNBC reported on Tuesday that Baris Cetinok, GM’s SVP of software and services product and design, will leave on Dec. 12 as part of a restructuring. A veteran of Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, Cetinok joined GM in September 2023.
“We are strategically integrating AI capabilities directly into our business and product organizations, enabling faster innovation and more targeted solutions,” a GM spokesperson said in a statement.
PR professional Eric Starkman noted in a post on LinkedIn that Turovsky’s is one in a wave of high-profile departures from GM, and emphasized that it should spark concern. Starkman’s post preceded news of Cetinok’s departure.
“Losing someone with Turovsky’s pedigree should set off alarm bells among investors,” Starkman wrote, noting Turovsky’s focus on physical AI. “China’s EV makers already excel at this discipline, applying Physical AI across both their factories and their vehicles.”
Alongside Richardson, Starkman wrote that JP Clausen, a former Tesla and Google executive who joined in April 2024 to oversee manufacturing, had left of his own accord. Eric Savitz, a former Barron’s editor and the one-time San Francisco bureau chief at Forbes, also left after just a year at GM News, stating on LinkedIn that he had been “Sacked. Canned. Axed. Downsized. Dismissed. Pink-slipped,” among other colorful ways of describing is departure.
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Chloe Aiello
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