OpenAI has had a bruising year. The company spent months battling former cofounder Elon Musk in a sensational jury trial, faced a high-profile trade secrets lawsuit from Apple, and drew widespread scrutiny after an unreleased model reportedly hacked another AI company. A steady string of executives has departed as the company prepares for an IPO.
Throughout it all, Greg Brockman has quietly amassed power. The president and cofounder has held the same title for years, but his purview has expanded significantly. He is now effectively second-in-command — and, when it comes to day-to-day operations, the person running the show.
April accelerated the shift. That month brought the exits of Bill Peebles, former head of Sora; Kevin Weil, VP of OpenAI's science arm; and Srinivas Narayanan, CTO of B2B applications, alongside medical leave for CMO Kate Rouch and then–AGI deployment CEO Fidji Simo. When Simo stepped back, Brockman took charge of all things product, including the super app effort, and later the entire scaling arm — authority over virtually every part of OpenAI's commercial operation.
Analysts read the consolidation as a signal of OpenAI's revenue focus ahead of an IPO and a push to differentiate from rival Anthropic; centralization can also cut expensive salary payouts. Brockman himself told CNBC this week that nothing is amiss: "I'm a constant, Sam [Altman] is a constant," he said, "and I think that we are stronger because of that resilience and diversity."