Kevin Weil, Chief Product Officer at OpenAI, speaks at the Hill & Valley Forum on Wednesday, April 30, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, USA.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Two OpenAI executives announced their departure from the company on Friday, the latest in a series of leadership shakeups at the artificial intelligence startup.
Bill Peebles, who led OpenAI’s defunct short-form video app Sora, and Kevin Weil, vice president of OpenAI for Science, shared news of their departure in separate posts on X on Friday.
An OpenAI spokesperson said the company is decentralizing OpenAI for Science to bring operations closer to the teams building key modeling capabilities, products and infrastructure.
The departure comes just weeks after Fiji Simo, OpenAI’s head of product and business, announced he would be taking a leave of absence due to worsening neuroimmune conditions. OpenAI’s head of marketing, Kate Rouch, also decided to step down earlier this month to focus on cancer recovery, and OpenAI’s executive director, Brad Lightcap, has transitioned to a new role focused on “special projects.”
Weil joined OpenAI in 2024 and served as the company’s chief product officer before launching OpenAI for Science the following year with the goal of “building the next great scientific instrument: an AI-powered platform that accelerates scientific discovery,” according to a LinkedIn post. He previously held leadership roles at the following companies: Meta And Twitter.
“It’s been two years of mind-expanding, from being chief product officer to joining the research team and starting OpenAI for Science,” Weil wrote on Friday.
Peebles joined OpenAI in 2023 and orchestrated Sora’s buzzy launch, propelling the app to the top. appleApp Store. Sora allowed users to generate short videos and post them to a shared feed, but OpenAI shut down the app last month as it looks to rack up costs and reallocate computing resources ahead of a potential IPO.
“I am proud of this team for enduring the sleepless nights before and after launch to deploy the technology in a responsible manner and guide the direction of societal norms,” Peebles wrote. “Sora is a project that could not have been realized anywhere else but OpenAI, and I will always have a deep love for this place.”
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