OpenAI Expands COO’s Role as Sam Altman Focuses on Research and Products

OpenAI is expanding the role of its chief operating officer and elevating two executives to the C-suite as Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman shifts more of his focus to the technical side.

The San Francisco-based company is set to announce Monday that COO Brad Lightcap will take on greater responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the business, including overseeing international expansion and corporate partnerships with firms such as Microsoft and Apple. Mark Chen and Julia Villagra have also been promoted to chief research officer and chief people officer, respectively.

Altman, meanwhile, is focusing more on guiding the ChatGPT maker's research and product efforts, the company said. OpenAI is not planning to hire a replacement for former Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, who announced that she was leaving the company in September and has since launched an AI startup.

OpenAI has significantly expanded its leadership ranks since Altman was briefly ousted by the board in late 2023, reflecting the company's growing headcount, valuation and ambitions. The latest executive moves signal that Altman wants to push ahead with cutting-edge AI research that can support powerful new products for consumers and businesse

“We remain focused on the same core — pursuing frontier AI research that accelerates human progress,” Altman said in a company blog post. “But we now also deliver products used by hundreds of millions of people.”

The leadership updates follow a string of high-profile departures from the company, including former Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, co-founder John Schulman and Murati. Some who've left, including Jan Leike, formerly in charge of a team focused on long-term AI risks, have been publicly skeptical of OpenAI's commitment to ensuring safe AI development. 

In the blog post, Altman said he thinks “real-world usage” of OpenAI's technology “helps make our research better.” OpenAI also said it remains committed to its mission to build artificial general intelligence — or AI that can perform most intellectual tasks better than people — in a way that's beneficial for humanity.

Chen will likely play a key role in assessing any potential trade-offs between prioritizing safety and new software releases. An OpenAI veteran who was previously the senior vice president of research, Chen is tasked with integrating research and product development. The goal, according to the blog post, is “enabling faster translation of research into products people love.”

Founded a decade ago as a nonprofit research organization, OpenAI is in discussions to restructure as a more conventional for-profit, public benefit corporation. The company is also in talks to raise as much as $40 billion in a new funding round at a $300 billion post-money valuation, Bloomberg previously reported.

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