It’s Greg Brockman’s OpenAI now

What happened

OpenAI has had a hell of a year. The company spent months battling former co-founder Elon Musk in a sensational jury trial, was hit with a high-profile trade secrets lawsuit from Apple, and faced widespread scrutiny after an unreleased model hacked another AI company. As it prepares for an IPO, a steady string of executives have departed, including some of the company’s biggest names.

” To outside observers, the changes demonstrate OpenAI’s growing focus on chasing revenue as its IPO approaches, as well as fostering products that will differentiate it from rival Anthropic. Big shifts in executives’ scope of work tend to be a “signal towards where the company is headed strategically,” Harrison Rolfes, a senior research analyst at PitchBook, told The Verge.

“When you have someone like Greg Brockman, for example, he’s more of a product scale and commercial sort of guy. ’” Brockman’s authority is exceeded only by Altman — who undertook a deliberate consolidation of power after clashing with OpenAI’s board in 2023.

The two didn’t always agree in OpenAI’s early days: Brockman sometimes sided with Sutskever in difficult decisions about power dynamics, questioning some of Altman’s ambitions, although he also worried about Musk “steamrolling” Altman. But he’s generally stayed close to Altman personally and professionally. When Altman was ousted from his CEO role in November 2023, Brockman immediately resigned in solidarity and began making plans for a new AI endeavor with him.

Why it matters

Throughout it all, one person has quietly amassed power: Greg Brockman. Brockman is currently OpenAI’s president and co-founder. He’s helped lead OpenAI since its inception, described as an “engineering workhorse that pushed to build scaled-up systems that would train the AI and make it work” during the company’s early days.

High-level figures have been leaving OpenAI all year, but April is when the departures really picked up. That month saw the exit of Bill Peebles, former head of Sora; Kevin Weil, VP of OpenAI’s science arm; and Srinivas Narayanan, CTO of B2B applications.

Two others separately departed citing medical reasons: CMO Kate Rouch and Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of AGI deployment — who went on leave in April before officially stepping down in July. The changes have continued. Earlier this month, CRO Denise Dresser, who had taken on a slew of additional responsibilities after the April shakeups, suddenly announced her departure after just eight months.

” OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Several of these departures — like those of Rouch, Peebles, and Weil — didn’t seem to directly affect Brockman’s position. But others expanded his authority. When Simo went on medical leave, Brockman took charge of all things product, including leading OpenAI’s super app efforts.

That role took on even greater significance the following month, after OpenAI underwent yet another executive reorganization to focus on growing revenue. The change put Brockman not only in charge of product strategy, but also the company’s entire “scaling” arm, giving him authority over virtually every part of its commercial operation. Simo’s official departure, just weeks after OpenAI officially filed to IPO, solidified that arrangement.

What to watch

Since then, the two have only seemed to become more aligned. Any centralization of power has practical benefits for OpenAI, allowing it to cut some of its most expensive salary payouts to help its balance sheet, says Ross Carmel, a partner at Sichenzia Ross Ference Carmel (SRFC).

“When you’re going into an IPO, particularly for a company like OpenAI, who is lagging behind Anthropic in terms of revenue, you want to decrease those expenses so that this way, you’re either more profitable or closer to profitable,” he said.