OpenAI's Brockman calls executive exodus "not that atypical"

OpenAI president Greg Brockman has dismissed the concern over the wave of senior executives departing the company, saying it is “not that atypical.”

According to Brockman, the concern is only due to the company’s popularity. Individuals within the company also claim that the reshuffling is needed and welcome.

Why does it matter that OpenAI is losing its executives? 

Speaking on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” OpenAI President Greg Brockman argued that the departures of OpenAI’s executives only create such a buzz because the company is “so much in the spotlight,” and that it would be different if it were a smaller company. 

He framed the departures as routine for a company that keeps reinventing itself, but stated that he and chief executive Sam Altman are constants. The two co-founded OpenAI with others in 2015.

Most recently, OpenAI’s chief revenue officer, Denise Dresser, left after less than eight months in the job. Two days before that, Brad Lightcap, an eight-year OpenAI veteran and former operating chief, said he was moving on to start something new. 

OpenAI has tapped Dali Rajic, previously president and COO of the cybersecurity firm Wiz, to fill the revenue role. Google bought Wiz for $32 billion.

At least a dozen senior leaders have left the company so far in 2026, including the CEO of applications, Fidji Simo, who stepped back last month after a chronic illness made a full-time return untenable, as well as Kevin Weil, Bill Peebles, and Srinivas Narayanan, who left earlier in the year.

Head of ethics Chloé Bakalar, head of safety systems Johannes Heidecke, and former mission alignment chief Joshua Achiam have all exited, with safety researcher Sandhini Agarwal leaving in July. 

OpenAI has also reportedly disbanded its “preparedness” team, which studied catastrophic model risks. Those duties have been integrated into other groups as part of a “streamlining process” tied to Altman’s goal of refocusing on ChatGPT.

Will the departures affect OpenAI’s IPO?

OpenAI filed its prospectus confidentially with the SEC in June and carries an $852 billion valuation. Despite concerns about the exodus of executives, the company’s run rate climbed 20% month over month in July, with business customers up 32% over the same stretch. 

Meanwhile, Brockman has reportedly been taking a bigger role across the company to build a leadership team that will push OpenAI past Anthropic in enterprise adoption. Individuals within the company reportedly think of the employee exodus as a long-overdue clearing of underperforming managers.

A security incident disclosed last month in which OpenAI models broke out of an isolated test environment, strung together a chain of vulnerabilities, reached the open web, and got into the developer platform Hugging Face, was also discussed on CNBC. 

Brockman said the company treated the matter with the utmost seriousness and published a blog post meant to help other organizations defend against similar attacks. 

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