AI startup OpenAI is facing fresh questions about leadership stability after revenue chief Denise Dresser announced her sudden departure, days after longtime executive Brad Lightcap said he was leaving. Senior executives leaving before a landmark IPO is a “huge red flag” according to experts.
CNBC reports that OpenAI’s C-suite turmoil is giving investors another reason for concern as the artificial intelligence company moves toward what is expected to be a historic IPO as it tries to justify its $852 billion valuation.
Dresser announced her exit late last week, just days after Lightcap said he was ending an eight-year stint at the ChatGPT creator to “start something new.” When OpenAI hired Dresser from Slack as chief revenue officer in December, executive Fidji Simo said in a blog post that Dresser’s “experience will help us make AI useful, reliable, and accessible for businesses everywhere.” Four months later, Dresser took on added responsibilities when Lightcap left his operating chief role for a position focused on “special projects.” Now Dresser, Simo and Lightcap are all gone.
The departures add pressure on CEO Sam Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman, the company’s president, to project stability as investors grow 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 has not provided a timeline for an offering.
“The executives leaving OpenAI ahead of their IPO is a huge red flag,” Kevin McCormick, founder of AI startup SignAudit.AI, wrote on X on Thursday. He noted that Dresser likely walked away from a large pay package by leaving after less than one year. “If the executives leaving aren’t being ‘made whole’ by the next company, it’s bad news for OpenAI,” McCormick wrote.
OpenAI on Thursday 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 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.” Rajic was introduced to OpenAI through Thrive founder Josh Kushner, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Thrive has been one of OpenAI’s most prominent backers.
Dresser and Lightcap are the latest in a string of exits. Simo, who left her job as Instacart CEO last year to join OpenAI, said in July she was stepping away to focus on recovery after a “severe exacerbation of a chronic illness.” Four other executives, including Kevin Weil, vice president of OpenAI for Science, and marketing chief Kate Rouch, departed in April. Rouch left to focus on cancer recovery.
Breitbart News previously reported that OpenAI’s head of ethics quit after less than a year with the company.
Two current investors, who asked not to be named, said they were surprised by Dresser’s announcement, though they said chaos is part of OpenAI’s fast-moving culture. Two former employees described a hire fast, fire fast culture, with one calling the environment a pressure cooker.
Dresser, who spent more than a decade in senior roles at Salesforce, was tasked with growing OpenAI’s enterprise unit, a high-margin business competing directly with Anthropic. OpenAI said that under her leadership the enterprise business grew to 2 million customers, doubling from a year prior.
Brockman told employees Thursday that run rate revenue increased more than 20 percent month over month in July, including 32 percent growth for business customers, according to an internal Slack message shared with CNBC. “We’re now at an inflection point: the next generation of models will change not just how individual workflows get done, but what it means to build and run a company,” he wrote.
CFO Sarah Friar held a pre-planned meeting with investors on Friday, joined by Brockman. Friar said enterprise now accounts for more revenue than the ChatGPT-led consumer business. Brockman thanked Dresser for her contributions and brushed off concerns about the competitive threat of open-source models from China, according to a person in attendance.
In April, Dresser told CNBC that enterprise made up 40 percent of revenue and was “on track to reach parity with consumer by the end of 2026.”
Instability at the top is not new for OpenAI. In 2023, Altman was briefly removed as CEO after the board determined he was “not consistently candid in his communications,” before being restored days later. The episode, which some employees call “the blip,” came up repeatedly during the Musk v. Altman trial in May. Elon Musk sued OpenAI, Altman and Brockman in 2024 over the company’s corporate structure.
Breitbart News previously reported that a deep dive article on Sam Altman by Ronan Farrow paints him as having sociopathic tendencies:
The New Yorker has published a major investigation of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman written by Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz. The article provides a fascinating and deeply researched view into the life of Altman, including blow-by-blow details of his short-lived ouster from the company.
The piece explains that prominent figures in the AI world hold a deep distrust of Altman, with many using the word “sociopathic” to describe his personality. Altman’s enemies list extends beyond OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever, who left the company after failing to give Altman the boot, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who is bitter enemies with Altman. As Farrow and Marantz write, even former OpenAI board members see Altman as being “unconstrained by truth.”
Breitbart News social media director and author Wynton Hall explains in his instant bestseller, Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI, that conservatives must develop a plan to deal with the bias baked into AI by leftists in Silicon Valley. Especially when the personalities running AI companies are as troubling to learn about as Sam Altman, it takes an effective framework to gain the benefits of AI without the bias and downsides.
Read more at CNBC here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.