OpenAI remains the original frontier AI lab, and by several measures it is thriving. Its most recent public model, GPT-5.6, ranks among the most capable and efficient options available today. Meanwhile, the company’s desktop app for agentic coding and workplace tasks has added roughly 15 million subscribers over the past two months. The company has also confidentially filed to go public. Yet an unusual trend is unfolding behind the scenes: a steady stream of senior leaders leaving the organization.
Since the start of the year, more than a dozen executives have exited. That list includes CEO Sam Altman’s top deputy, the chief operating officer, a chief revenue officer, the chief marketing officer, and several team leads. The latest name is Chris Malone, OpenAI’s head of data centers, who departed last week after joining in March 2025.
Why the Leaders Are Leaving
The reasons vary. Some departures stemmed from health issues, while others were tied to an internal reorganization as Altman moved to trim expensive “side projects” and concentrate on revenue-generating work. Malone’s exit stands out because OpenAI’s core advantage over competitors such as Anthropic and SpaceX has long been its heavy investment in compute.
OpenAI said Malone’s departure followed a restructuring of its infrastructure team, now led by vice president Sachin Katti. Malone had previously reported directly to president Greg Brockman. A senior executive finding himself several levels lower in the hierarchy offers a plausible explanation for the move.
The company declined to comment on broader organizational shifts, but Brockman appears to be reasserting control. As co-founder and president, he helped build OpenAI’s early infrastructure before being stripped of most management duties in 2019, when Altman took the CEO role. According to Karen Hao’s book “Empire of AI,” Brockman later played a disruptive part inside the company, contributing to projects like GPT-4 while fueling internal rivalries that contributed to the 2023 “Blip,” when the board briefly removed Altman. Brockman took a short sabbatical in 2024 and then returned. Today, both the infrastructure and product teams report to him. “I like to say that everyone reports to Greg at the end of the day,” said Thibault Sottiaux, who leads the company’s API and app offerings.
The IPO Casts a Long Shadow
The prospect of a public offering looms over these changes. In June, OpenAI confirmed it had filed going-public disclosures confidentially with the SEC. Tapping public markets would help the capital-intensive lab, but it also means revealing financials around the same time as rival Anthropic, which is likewise planning a debut.
Anthropic is reportedly profitable, while OpenAI’s losses are reportedly growing alongside its revenue. The OpenAI IPO is now not expected until 2027. For comparison, companies that file confidentially typically reach the trading floor within about five months, and SpaceX did so in under two.
Altman’s public remarks about a difficult past 12 months and the ongoing reorganization align with the view that OpenAI moved ahead of itself on its IPO filing and is now reshaping its structure. OpenAI confirmed its
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