OpenAI has seen a wave of senior executive departures over the past several months, and the person gaining influence from it is president and co-founder Greg Brockman, according to reporting from TechCrunch and The Verge's Decoder podcast.
Per TechCrunch, more than a dozen executives have left the company since the start of the year, including CEO Sam Altman's top deputy, the chief operating officer, the chief revenue officer, and the chief marketing officer, along with several team leads. The most recent was Chris Malone, head of data centers, who left last week after little more than a year in the role, the outlet reports.
TechCrunch notes that some of the departures followed health issues or a broader reorganization, as Altman moved to cut costly side projects and refocus the company on revenue-generating work. Malone's exit stands out regardless, the outlet argues, because compute investment is one of OpenAI's main advantages over rivals.
Brockman takes over day-to-day control
The departures coincide with Brockman's growing reach inside the company. Both TechCrunch and The Verge report that he now oversees the product and infrastructure teams as well as the consumer and enterprise units, effectively every operational arm of OpenAI.
"I like to say that everyone reports to Greg at the end of the day," Thibault Sottiaux, who leads OpenAI's API and app offerings, told TechCrunch. The Verge's senior AI reporter, Hayden Field, describes Brockman as effectively the day-to-day operational leader of OpenAI, while Altman focuses more on strategic decisions and the company's path to an IPO.
Per TechCrunch, Brockman ran OpenAI's engineering side between 2015 and 2019, before being relieved of most management responsibilities when Altman became CEO. The outlet cites journalist Karen Hao's book "Empire of AI" to note that Brockman played a disruptive role in that intermediate period, including internal rivalries that reportedly helped precede Altman's brief 2023 ouster.
A dynamic rooted in the 2023 board coup
The relationship between the two traces back to 2023, when OpenAI's board removed Altman as CEO for a few days. Both outlets report that Brockman resigned in solidarity as soon as he learned of the decision, and that both men returned to the company only after the board reversed course. Brockman took a brief sabbatical in 2024 before resuming executive duties.
Per TechCrunch, Malone's exit is also tied to a reorganization of the infrastructure team, now led by vice president Sachin Katti; Malone previously reported directly to Brockman.
OpenAI confidentially filed IPO paperwork with the SEC in June, according to TechCrunch, which reports the offering isn't expected before 2027.
The Verge's podcast also ties the moment to OpenAI's competition with Anthropic for enterprise customers, an area where the company is reportedly losing ground to its rival, per Hayden Field. In the interview, Field describes Brockman as now controlling all four of OpenAI's major arms — consumer, enterprise, Codex, and infrastructure — each of which previously had separate leadership.
Why the industry is watching
The consolidation comes as OpenAI prepares for a historic IPO while still posting growing losses alongside growing revenue, and as it works to hold ground against Anthropic, which is reportedly profitable and pursuing its own public listing. With so many senior roles vacated, who fills the resulting vacuum, and how Brockman uses his expanded authority, will shape OpenAI's product and infrastructure strategy heading into that listing, well beyond the U.S. market where most of this turnover has played out.
OpenAI has not publicly commented on the broader leadership shakeup, according to TechCrunch, beyond confirming the infrastructure reorganization around Katti and noting that Malone's move away from reporting directly to Brockman followed from that same change.
