{"id":5779,"date":"2026-08-20T16:16:01","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T16:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=5779"},"modified":"2026-08-20T16:16:01","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T16:16:01","slug":"greg-brockman-openai-role-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=5779","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Greg Brockman\u2019s OpenAI now"},"content":{"rendered":"


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OpenAI has had a hell of a year. The company spent months battling former co-founder Elon Musk in a sensational jury trial, was hit with a high-profile trade secrets lawsuit from Apple, and faced widespread scrutiny after an unreleased model hacked another AI company. As it prepares for an IPO, a steady string of executives have departed, including some of the company\u2019s biggest names.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Throughout it all, one person has quietly amassed power: Greg Brockman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Brockman is currently OpenAI\u2019s president and co-founder. He\u2019s helped lead OpenAI since its inception, described as<\/a> an \u201cengineering workhorse that pushed to build scaled-up systems that would train the AI and make it work\u201d during the company\u2019s early days. He\u2019s also been ambitious from the start, famously musing in a personal journal in 2017, \u201cFinancially what will take me to $1B?\u201d (His current stake in OpenAI is worth nearly 30 times that.) But at that point he shared power with a handful of cofounders, like chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, as well as CEO Sam Altman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Now, though Brockman\u2019s title hasn\u2019t changed in years, his purview and job description have expanded significantly. He\u2019s essentially now second-in-command at the company \u2014 and, when it comes to day-to-day operations, the big boss.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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High-level figures have been leaving OpenAI all year, but April is when the departures really picked up. That month saw the exit of Bill Peebles, former head of Sora; Kevin Weil, VP of OpenAI\u2019s science arm; and Srinivas Narayanan, CTO of B2B applications. Two others separately departed citing medical reasons: CMO Kate Rouch and Fidji Simo, OpenAI\u2019s CEO of AGI deployment \u2014 who went on leave in April before officially stepping down in July. The changes have continued. Earlier this month, CRO Denise Dresser, who had taken on a slew of additional responsibilities after the April shakeups, suddenly announced her departure after just eight months. Days later, Brad Lightcap \u2014 who had been in charge of \u201cspecial projects\u201d for a few months, but before that was OpenAI\u2019s longtime COO \u2014 announced he would leave to start \u201csomething new.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He\u2019s essentially now second-in-command at the company \u2014 and, when it comes to day-to-day operations, the big boss<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Several of these departures \u2014 like those of Rouch, Peebles, and Weil \u2014 didn\u2019t seem to directly affect Brockman\u2019s position. But others expanded his authority. When Simo went on medical leave<\/a>, Brockman took charge of all things product, including leading OpenAI\u2019s super app efforts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That role took on even greater significance the following month, after OpenAI underwent<\/a> yet another executive reorganization<\/a> to focus on growing revenue. The change put Brockman not only in charge of product strategy, but also the company\u2019s entire \u201cscaling\u201d arm, giving him authority over virtually every part of its commercial operation. Simo\u2019s official departure, just weeks after OpenAI officially filed to IPO<\/a>, solidified that arrangement. Notably, when Dresser departed last week, a quote from Brockman \u2014 rather than CEO Sam Altman \u2014 was included in the press release<\/a> about the changes; he wrote that the company would \u201cbuild out the full system to make AI broadly useful for people and businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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To outside observers, the changes demonstrate OpenAI\u2019s growing focus on chasing revenue as its IPO approaches, as well as fostering products that will differentiate it from rival Anthropic. Big shifts in executives\u2019 scope of work tend to be a \u201csignal towards where the company is headed strategically,\u201d Harrison Rolfes, a senior research analyst at PitchBook, told The Verge<\/em>. \u201cWhen you have someone like Greg Brockman, for example, he\u2019s more of a product scale and commercial sort of guy. He has a deep technical knowledge that essentially will collapse certain decisionmaking layers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The change put Brockman not only in charge of product strategy, but also the company\u2019s entire \u201cscaling\u201d arm<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It also may naturally translate to some departures among lower-level employees, said Rolfes: \u201cWhatever he says goes 1787242561 \u2026 If, let\u2019s say, you\u2019re below Brockman and you don\u2019t agree with his approach but you\u2019re a lead researcher, whatever it may be, you\u2019re not going to work there anymore \u2014 you\u2019re going to say, \u2018I\u2019m going to leave.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Brockman\u2019s authority is exceeded only by Altman \u2014 who undertook a deliberate consolidation of power<\/a> after clashing with OpenAI\u2019s board in 2023. The two didn\u2019t always agree in OpenAI\u2019s early days: Brockman sometimes sided with Sutskever in difficult decisions about power dynamics, questioning some of Altman\u2019s ambitions<\/a>, although he also worried about Musk \u201csteamrolling\u201d Altman. But he\u2019s generally stayed close to Altman personally and professionally. When Altman was ousted from his CEO role in November 2023, Brockman immediately resigned in solidarity and began making plans<\/a> for a new AI endeavor with him. Since then, the two have only seemed to become more aligned.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Any centralization of power has practical benefits for OpenAI, allowing it to cut some of its most expensive salary payouts to help its balance sheet, says Ross Carmel, a partner at Sichenzia Ross Ference Carmel (SRFC). \u201cWhen you\u2019re going into an IPO, particularly for a company like OpenAI, who is lagging behind Anthropic in terms of revenue, you want to decrease those expenses so that this way, you\u2019re either more profitable or closer to profitable,\u201d he said. However, he added, \u201cWhile it\u2019s not unusual to see high-level execs leave a company just prior to a public listing, I think the fact they\u2019re all in this small time period \u2014 that part is unusual.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Although experts told The Verge<\/em> the executive departures were more intense than usual and could raise red flags, Brockman said Monday on CNBC<\/em>\u2019s \u201cSquawk Box<\/a>\u201d that nothing was amiss. \u201cThere have been different eras where we have different sets of leaders in place \u2026 I\u2019m a constant, Sam [Altman] is a constant, and that, I think that we are stronger because of that resilience and diversity.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIn order for OpenAI to be successful and really differentiate themselves from Anthropic, they need hardware and consumer products to sell to consumers, and that\u2019s what Greg does well.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Brockman\u2019s own constant has been translating OpenAI\u2019s research into practical products. Back in 2020, he celebrated<\/a> OpenAI\u2019s GPT-3 and its developer API as \u201cthe first time that [OpenAI has] had a general-purpose AI system that\u2019s immediately commercially valuable\u2014it\u2019s actually useful.\u201d Fast-forward more than five years, and these products need to end up profitable as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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SRFC\u2019s Carmel said OpenAI likely hopes Brockman can deliver consumer revenue instead of just trying to catch up with Anthropic on enterprise. \u201cIn order for OpenAI to be successful and really differentiate themselves from Anthropic, they need hardware and consumer products to sell to consumers, and that\u2019s what Greg does well.\u201d Rolfes predicted that OpenAI would develop some sort of consumer product under Brockman\u2019s oversight by the end of September, so that he could \u201cshow that he deserves that position.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThat\u2019s the biggest worry that a lot of public investors have now,\u201d Rolfes said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to say, \u2018Hey, does Greg have what it takes to run more of OpenAI, and is OpenAI building this institution that can operate without really depending heavily on him \u2014 on both Greg and Sam?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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