OpenAI has lost yet another executive, and the timing is especially remarkable given that this person oversaw the execution of the company’s data center strategy.
The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI’s former head of data centers, Chris Malone, left the company last week. Malone’s tenure at OpenAI was relatively short, as he joined OpenAI last March after spending nearly five years at Meta and more than a decade at Google before that.
Mr. Malone joined the company shortly after the Stargate project was launched. The Stargate Project is a $500 million data center initiative backed by the Trump administration that aims to develop data centers in the United States. OpenAI is considered a key partner in this effort, along with Oracle, Nvidia, SoftBank, and Microsoft.
Why is Malone quitting? It’s not entirely clear. As the industry-wide frenzy to build AI infrastructure ramps up, data center strategy has become one of the most high-profile roles in any AI lab, which makes the attrition rate for this seat particularly alarming.
In a statement to TechCrunch about Malone’s departure, OpenAI said it had “recently restructured” its “infrastructure organization to support the scale and pace of our work.” He added: “We have a strong and experienced data center team in place with clear leadership and technical expertise to execute our plans.”
As part of the reorganization, Malone will no longer report directly to OpenAI President Greg Brockman and will now report to OpenAI Vice President Sachin Katti, who has assumed leadership of the group, according to the Journal.
Several other executives are said to be currently overseeing OpenAI’s data center strategy, including Uday Ruddarraju, who leads the company’s data center team. Brent Mayo leads the data center build and delivery program. Spas Lazarov is a data center and energy industry veteran who leads all data center engineering.
Whatever the reason for Malone’s departure, he’s not alone. His departure marks the start of a series of resignations of more than a dozen executives this year. Business Insider recently tallied a total of 13 departures for 2026, with several departing in the last month alone. And they’re not just junior employees walking out the door, they’re some of the most senior seats in the company.
Two weeks ago, the company replaced chief revenue officer Dennis Dresser, who had been with the company for just about eight months. Two days before Dresser’s retirement announcement, the company also lost one of its longest-serving executives, Brad Lightcap, who served as the company’s chief operating officer for years. Lightcap said he intended to “start something new,” but did not provide details about what that new project would entail.
About a month before these departures, the company also lost its de facto second-in-command, Fiji Simo (Simo served as head of product and business, reporting to CEO Sam Altman). She resigned from her position to recover from a “chronic illness.” Mr. Simo will remain with the company in an advisory role.
There are also notable changes to OpenAI’s safety and ethics teams. The company lost its “head of ethics” Chloe Bacalar in July, and last week it was reported to have disbanded its readiness team, a task force tasked with assessing whether its AI models could pose a catastrophic risk.
Other team leaders, like Bill Peebles, the former head of OpenAI’s now-defunct AI image generation software Sora, left the team when the project was shut down. The company also lost chief marketing officer Kate Ruesch in April, who, like Simo, reportedly left for health reasons.
Those who remain at the company have worked hard to minimize the significance of the ongoing exodus, with co-founder Greg Brockman recently lamenting that the intense “spotlight” on his company means that “every departure is scrutinized in a different way.”
But this cancellation naturally raises questions, especially if you’re preparing for an IPO. OpenAI’s listing was originally scheduled for this year, but has now reportedly been pushed back to 2027, and the company is undergoing a kind of reputational review for its impending listing. There are concerns that the company is overvalued and that its profitability does not justify the huge investments being made in the lab.
Suffice it to say that even with the large number of executive resignations, these doubts have not allayed.
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