Brad Lightcap, chief operating officer and one of the most senior executives at OpenAI, announced on his social network X that he is leaving the company to “start something new.” He spent eight years at the company, where he was also chief financial officer and right-hand man to Sam Altman.
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Although his new project is still unknown, Lightcap will stay a few more weeks at OpenAI, where he has been focused “on the next horizon and the obstacles that could stand in the way of the success of our mission.”
The COO’s departure adds to the growing list of executives leaving OpenAI. Last April, four executives left their positions: Kevin Weil (product director), Bill Peebles (head of Sora), and Srinivas Narayanan (CTO of B2B applications) left in the same week, while Kate Rouch, marketing director, had to leave her position to treat cancer.
In June, Barret Zoph, head of enterprise sales, left for the second time after returning earlier in the year. Finally, in July Johannes Heidecke (head of security), Joshua Achiam (chief futurist), and Chloé Bakalar (head of ethics) left. In total, nine names have disappeared from OpenAI in just four months, most of them from Altman’s core team built since 2018.
What is happening?
Why executives are leaving OpenAI
Interestingly, most of these executives are not signing with rivals like Anthropic or Google for a higher salary, but want to start their own ventures. Thus, the talent that laid the foundations of the sector is leaving OpenAI to found their own companies.
There is also a growing feeling that OpenAI could be losing its competitive edge. Although ChatGPT remains the AI chatbot with the highest number of users, its competitors are gaining ground in the business sector and market valuation.
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On the other hand, Lightcap’s words about the “obstacles that could stand in the way” could mean there are some internal disagreements regarding the direction the Altman company is taking.
Reorganizing responsibilities
A multi-billion dollar retention strategy ahead of the IPO
To try to stop the departures, OpenAI has launched a share buyback program valued at about 7 billion dollars so that employees can convert their shares into cash without waiting for the company to go public.
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However, these financial incentives do not seem to be enough to retain a leadership team that is seeing an IPO that could value the company at more than a trillion dollars.
Each new resignation forces Altman to reorganize the responsibilities of each department while trying to project an image of stability that is not supported by the facts.
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