What happened
Chris Malone, who was responsible for the data center direction at OpenAI, left the company last week. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report it. The reasons for the departure are not explained: neither the manager himself nor the company named specific circumstances — only general words about reorganization.
OpenAI's official comment to TechCrunch looks deliberately calm. The company says it recently restructured its infrastructure division — as required by the scale and pace of work — and that the data center team brings together experienced people with clear leadership and the necessary technical expertise to execute the plans. The wording is standard for such situations: it does not confirm a conflict, but it also does not explain why the person left.
Who is Chris Malone
This is not a routine staffing event. Malone has nearly five years at Meta and more than ten years at Google behind him — that is, a person with experience in large-scale infrastructure that is rare for the market. He joined OpenAI in March of last year, meaning he spent noticeably less time there than at his previous jobs, and the departure came quickly.
He joined shortly after the launch of the Stargate Project — an initiative to build data centers in the US worth $500 million, which was backed by the US government. OpenAI participates in the project together with Oracle, Nvidia, SoftBank and Microsoft and is considered one of its key partners. In other words, Malone came in precisely for the task that now defines the company's strategy.
A new reporting vertical
According to WSJ, during the reorganization Malone stopped reporting directly to OpenAI president Greg Brockman and moved under the supervision of vice president Sachin Katti, who took over the direction. In itself this is not a demotion in a vacuum — rather a restructuring of the structure, where infrastructure gets its own "owner" instead of a direct line to top management.
Responsibility is distributed among several executives:
- Uday Raddarraju — leads the data center team;
- Brent Mayo — responsible for the construction and commissioning program;
- Spas Lazarov, a veteran of the data center and energy industry, — oversees the entire engineering side.
Such a scheme suggests that the infrastructure wing is becoming multi-layered: strategy, construction and engineering are split among different people. The plus — less dependence on a single figure. The minus — more approvals and diffuse personal responsibility for deadlines.
This is not an isolated case
Malone's departure is a link in a long chain. According to Business Insider's count, 13 executives left OpenAI in 2026, and several of them — just in the last month. We are talking not about line employees, but about people in the highest positions.
Business and products
Two weeks ago the company replaced its revenue director: Denise Dresser had been in the role for about eight months. Two days before the announcement of her departure, OpenAI lost Brad Lightcap — one of its longest-serving executives, who held the COO post for many years. He limited himself to saying that he would start "something new," without revealing details.
About a month earlier, Fidji Simo left — effectively the company's second person: she oversaw the product and business direction and reported directly to Sam Altman. The formal reason was recovery from a chronic illness, while Simo remained at the company as an adviser. In April, for a similar reason — due to health — chief marketing officer Kate Rouch left.
There were also departures tied to the closure of projects. Bill Peebles headed Sora — a project that the company shut down.
Safety and ethics
The direction responsible for risks suffered notable losses. In July, head of ethics Chloé Bakalar left OpenAI, and last week it became known that the preparedness team, which assessed whether the company's models could lead to catastrophic consequences, was disbanded. For a company that speaks loudly about safety, such news is a sensitive topic.
What they say inside the company
The remaining executives try not to dramatize. OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman recently lamented that the company lives under too much scrutiny, because of which any departure is dissected in more detail than it would be at a less visible organization. The logic is understandable: for an open and much-discussed company, every staffing move turns into news.
But this logic has a limit. When more than a dozen top managers leave in a year, the explanation "people just watch us closely" stops working as a universal one.
Why this matters against the backdrop of the IPO
The main context is preparation for a public offering. The listing, which was initially expected this year, has reportedly been postponed to 2027. Before an IPO, a company goes through a reputational check, and any instability in leadership is read by investors as a signal.
Doubts were already being voiced: there was discussion about whether the company is overvalued and whether its profitability matches the gigantic investments in the lab. The continuous stream of departing executives rather fuels these doubts than dispels them — even if each individual case has its own private explanation.
What follows from this
Infrastructure is today OpenAI's key bet: it is the data centers that determine whether the company can scale up compute and fulfill its promises to its Stargate partners. Restructuring management for this task looks logical, and the distribution of roles among Raddarraju, Mayo and Lazarov is an attempt to make the direction more resilient.
The ambiguity lies elsewhere: the departure of a person who came in for the infrastructure push, and the simultaneous string of losses in business, products and safety, add up to a picture of a company that is right now reassembling its top management contour. Whether it will manage to get through this period without losing pace is an open question, and the answer to it will probably appear closer to the IPO conversations.
