OpenAI talent exodus raises 'huge red flag' ahead of IPO

Livestream Menu The sudden departure of OpenAI revenue chief Denise Dresser this week came days after longtime exec Brad Lightcap said he was leaving. OpenAI's C-suite instability is giving investors another reason for concern as the company makes moves toward a mammoth public listing. CFO Sarah Friar and President Greg Brockman are set to meet with OpenAI investors on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Dresser announced her sudden departure on Thursday, two days after Lightcap said he was ending an eight-year stint at the ChatGPT creator to "start something new." The talent exodus puts even more pressure on CEO Sam Altman and fellow co-founder Greg Brockman, the company's president, to project stability at a time when investors are already growing concerned about competition from Google and Anthropic, increased adoption of lower-cost open-weight models, and SpaceX's volatile stock price in its first two months on the market. OpenAI confidentially filed its IPO prospectus in June, but hasn't provided a timeline for a future offering. "The executives leaving OpenAI ahead of their IPO is a huge red flag," Kevin McCormick, founder of AI startup SignAudit. AI, wrote in a post on X on Thursday. He added that Dresser likely walked away from a large pay package .  "If the executives leaving aren't being 'made whole' , it's bad news for OpenAI," McCormick wrote.   A representative for OpenAI pointed CNBC to Brockman's statement from Thursday, after the company named Dali Rajic, former COO of cybersecurity company Wiz, which Google acquired for $32 billion earlier this year, as its new chief revenue officer. Brockman said that Dresser led the revenue group through a "formative period for the business," and that Rajic "will turn what we've learned into repeatable execution as we build out the full system to make AI broadly useful for people and businesses." Dresser and Lightcap are the latest in a recent string of big-name exits. Simo, who last year left her job as CEO of Instacart to join OpenAI, said in July that she was stepping away to focus on recovery after a "severe exacerbation of a chronic illness." Four other executives, including Kevin Weil, the vice president of OpenAI for Science, and marketing chief Kate Rouch, departed in April. Rouch left to focus on cancer recovery. OpenAI's financial backers were surprised by Dresser's announcement, according to two current investors, who asked not to be named in order to speak freely on the matter.