OpenAI has had at least 14 senior executives and core leaders leave their posts this year, according to a BlockBeats report that cited Business Insider and The Wall Street Journal.
Business Insider had tallied 13 departures as of Aug. 21. The Wall Street Journal later reported that Chris Malone, the company’s data center lead, had also left. The departures cut across commercial operations, product, safety, ethics, research, and infrastructure.
The executives and leaders who left
The 14 people named in the report are:
- Denise Dresser, chief revenue officer, who announced her departure in August.
- Brad Lightcap, former COO and special projects lead, who left to start a company.
- Fidji Simo, CEO of the applications business, who stepped away from full-time work for health reasons and became a part-time adviser.
- Kevin Weil, former chief product officer and head of OpenAI for Science, who left to start a company.
- Bill Peebles, head of Sora, who left in April.
- Srinivas Narayanan, CTO for enterprise applications, who left in April.
- Kate Rouch, chief marketing officer, who stepped down while undergoing treatment for breast cancer.
- Barret Zoph, head of enterprise AI sales, who left again about five months after returning to OpenAI.
- Chloé Bakalar, ethics lead, who left less than a year after joining.
- Johannes Heidecke, head of safety systems, who left during a reorganization of the safety team.
- Joshua Achiam, chief futurist and former mission alignment lead, who departed after nearly nine years at OpenAI.
- Caitlin Kalinowski, head of robotics and consumer hardware, who resigned over dissatisfaction with how governance handled cooperation with the Pentagon.
- Kaylin Voss, vice president of sales for the Americas, who resigned one week after Dresser left.
- Chris Malone, head of data centers, who left after changes to the infrastructure team.
The departures came for different reasons
The report said these executives did not leave for one common reason. Some left to build startups. Some stepped back because of health issues. Others exited as teams were cut or management structures were reshaped.
BlockBeats said some insiders viewed the latest wave as an active management reshuffle.
Leadership turnover continues after confidential IPO filing
According to BlockBeats, OpenAI secretly submitted IPO paperwork in the United States in June. Even after that filing, the company kept changing leaders across business, safety, research, and infrastructure.
The report added that OpenAI’s organizational stability ahead of a listing appeared weaker than that of rival Anthropic.