OpenAI Bolsters Leadership Team Amid Legal Challenges

Some of OpenAI's top new executives are a nod to its upcoming fights in the courtroom and Washington

I'll forgive you if you're having a tough time coming up with some names. While Altman has remained in the spotlight -- for better or worse -- he's surrounded himself with several new executives over the past year. Business Insider's Darius Rafieyan profiled OpenAI's leaders shaping the future of the AI giant. It's not surprising OpenAI had an executive facelift. When a coup fails, the instigators don't tend to stick around. Many of the people Darius highlighted have joined since the failed Altman ouster last November. But it's not just about Altman bringing in executives he thinks will remain loyal to him. Controversies be damned, OpenAI has made some big moves this year, which means it needs to add more leaders. The startup nabbed a partnership with Apple to power its AI features and is reportedly raising a round, composed of a who's who of the biggest names in tech, that values it at $150 billion. A good chunk of the executives Darius highlighted aren't involved in OpenAI's tech. Some of OpenAI's most high-profile executives are instead addressing legal challenges and lobbying regulators in the US and abroad. It's a nod to the fact OpenAI's biggest upcoming fights will take place in a courtroom as opposed to a computer screen. That might not sound exciting compared to cutting-edge AI, but it'll clearly be a major focus of every industry player. Copyright lawsuits against OpenAI over its usage of data to train its AI is one of its main concerns. But the issues don't stop there, as broader questions have been raised about the responsible usage of AI. None of that might sound as exciting as OpenAI's new models, but the impact from lawyers and lobbyists could ultimately be more impactful. Early wins for OpenAI around policing AI could set precedents the company can leverage for years to come. The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. Milan Sehmbi, fellow, in London. Amanda Yen, fellow, in New York.

OpenAI's power players: Meet the 20 leaders helping shape the future of the AI giant

This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in. At the same time, the company faces a slew of lawsuits, increased antitrust scrutiny, and the looming threat of AI regulation both in the US and in Europe. Even so, OpenAI finds itself at the epicenter of the booming AI industry and is preparing to raise additional funding from marquee investors in a deal that could value the company at more than $150 billion. Amid all this excitement and turmoil, the company has been on a hiring spree. From top-flight lawyers to world-class research scientists to Washington lobbyists, OpenAI is expanding nearly every part of the organization. While by no means a comprehensive list, below are some of the key power players who are helping to determine OpenAI's future. Sarah Friar, Chief Financial Officer Friar joined OpenAI in June as the company's first CFO. She previously served as CEO of Nextdoor and CFO of Square and held executive roles at Goldman Sachs. She's inheriting a business with a growing consumer-facing business and high-profile partnerships with Microsoft and Apple. At the same time, OpenAI is burning through billions of dollars as it seeks to outpace increasingly stiff competition from the likes of Google, Meta, and others. Friar is expected to bring much-needed financial acumen to OpenAI as the company moves to turn its research into mass-market products and a profitable business. Kwon was appointed Chief Strategy Officer in 2023 after spending nearly two years as OpenAI's general counsel. He was previously general counsel at famed tech incubator Y Combinator and assistant general counsel at Khosla Ventures. He helps set the agenda for a slew of OpenAI's non-research initiatives, including the company's increasingly active outreach to policymakers as well as the various legal challenges swirling around the company. Kwon works closely with VP of Global Impact Anna Makanju and VP of Global Affairs Chris Lehane (both included on this list) as they seek to build and strengthen OpenAI's relationships in the public sector. OpenAI's top lawyer joined the company in 2021 after serving as senior corporate counsel at Amazon. He took over for his former boss, Jason Kwon, who has since become the company's chief strategy officer. Cheng oversees an ever-expanding in-house legal team at a time when OpenAI faces dozens of lawsuits as well as multiple government investigations. Cheng's role in the company going forward is likely to be one of the most influential outside of the research teams as the company faces a slew of unprecedented legal questions that have the potential to determine the fate of the entire AI industry. Murati has played a paramount role at OpenAI since joining in 2018 to work on supercomputing strategy. She had previously worked at Tesla, focused on the electric car maker's Model X vehicle. At OpenAI, Murati would go on to oversee the teams that developed ChatGPT and Dall-E, two of the company's most important products. She's also been referred to as OpenAI's "minister of truth" for her efforts to ensure the company's AI products aren't deceptive or biased. She achieved even more prominence last November during her short stint as CEO during Altman's absence, and she continues to be an influential presence within the company. Kevin Weil, Chief Product Officer Weil, who joined the company in June, is a Silicon Valley veteran having worked at Meta, where he helped Instagram stave off competition from Snapchat, and Twitter where he was SVP of product. He comes to OpenAI as the company is expanding beyond pure research and endeavoring to build polished products for both consumer and enterprise use cases. He's expected to work closely with VP of Product and Partnerships Peter Welinder as well as Peter Deng, who leads product development for ChatGPT and ChatGPT Enterprise. Jakub Pachocki, Chief Scientist Pachocki joined OpenAI's research in 2017 after completing a PhD in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. He was promoted to chief scientist last May following the departure of co-founder Ilya Sutkever, who had helped lead the short-lived palace coup against Sam Altman. Pachocki had already been working closely with Sustkever on some of OpenAI's most ambitious projects including an advanced reasoning model known as Q* and later renamed Strawberry. "Ilya introduced me to the world of deep learning research and has been a mentor to me and a great collaborator for many years," Pachocki wrote on X after Sutskever's departure. Even before officially taking on the mantle of chief scientist, Pachocki had already emerged as a guiding force behind OpenAI's research efforts. Sam Altman has called Pachocki "easily one of the greatest minds of our generation," Mark Chen, VP of Research, Frontiers Chen's path to OpenAI is a bit atypical compared to some of his colleagues. After studying computer science and mathematics at MIT, he began his career as a quantitative trader on Wall Street before joining OpenAI in 2018. Chen now leads the company's frontier research, reporting to Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew. He has been integral to OpenAI's efforts to expand into multimodal models, heading up the team that developed DALL-E and the team that incorporated visual perception into GPT-4. Chen was also an important liaison between employees and management during Sam Altman's short-lived ouster, further cementing his importance within the company. Lilian Weng, VP of Research, Safety Weng joined OpenAI in 2018 after working as a data scientist and software engineer at major Silicon Valley companies, including Facebook, Dropbox, and Affirm. Weng took over the preparedness team after its former leader, Aleksandr Madry, was reassigned last July. The team is responsible for safeguarding against possible catastrophic risks related to OpenAI's frontier models. It's part of a broader effort within the company to consolidate safety research under Weng, who also serves on the board's Safety and Security Committee. As policymakers and consumers focus more attention on the potential security implications of high-powered AI models, Weng's role within the company is likely to become even more important. Barret Zoph, VP of Research, Post-Training Zoph recently took over the team responsible for fine-tuning OpenAI's models following the departure of co-founder John Schulman. Zoph had been Schulman's only direct report and had already been overseeing the team's day-to-day operations. A veteran of Google Brain, Zoph has occupied an increasingly prominent place within the company as he works to ensure OpenAI's advanced AI models are ready for expansion. Alec Radford, Research Fellow Radford joined OpenAI in 2016 at the age of 23, leaving the small AI company he had started in his dorm room. His first major breakthrough at OpenAI came in 2017 following the publication of the famous "transformer paper," which created the architecture that still underpins LLMs today. Radford's idea to combine transformer architecture with massive amounts of data radically changed the research culture within the company. It led directly to the success of the OpenAI's later GPT models which, thanks to Radford's innovation, have outperformed most competing models. Radford continues to be a major influence on OpenAI's research ambitions. Zico Kolter, Board Member and Head of the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon Carnegie Mellon, along with Stanford and MIT, has emerged as one of the more important conduits of engineering and research talent for the budding AI industry. Kolter, who runs the machine learning department at CMU, joined OpenAI's board in August and will serve on the Safety And Security Committee, which is responsible for making safety recommendations for all OpenAI projects. Kolter is focused on helping guide the company's research efforts and helping continue to build out the already impressive research teams working at OpenAI. Kolter will also chair OpenAI's Safety and Security Committee, which is tasked with ensuring the company's technology benefits humanity. Paul Nakasone, Board Member, Retired US Army General, and Former Director of the NSA Nakasone, who served as Commander of US Cyber Command and Director of the NSA, joined OpenAI's board in June and will serve on the Safety and Security Committee. Nakasone's experience on the front lines of cyber warfare gives him unique insight into the potential risks and opportunities of advanced AI technologies. His deep connections within the federal government and, in particular, the Defense Department are likely to be valuable for OpenAI, which is moving fast to expand its partnerships within the public sector. Bret Taylor, Chairman of the Board Taylor is best known for his time as Facebook's CTO and for helping to lead the team that created Google Maps. He joined OpenAI's board in 2023 after the failed attempt to push out CEO Sam Altman and has since been leading the effort to rebuild the company's board and reassure investors and consumers alike that OpenAI is in good hands. He's recruited a veritable who's who of tech and policy talent to help steer the rapidly growing company, including former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, Instacart CEO Fidji Simo, and former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Nicole Seligman. Adam D'Angelo, Chairman of the Board The former Facebook executive and founder of Quora was one of four OpenAI board members who voted to fire Sam Altman last November. But he was also the only board member to stay with the company following Altman's return. In fact, during the negotiations to reinstate Altman, D'Angelo was apparently the only board director that all sides could agree on. A longtime fixture in Silicon Valley power circles, D'Angelo has continued to play an important role in shaping OpenAI's future. He has helped to build open lines of communication between employees and management and brought a sense of stability to the rapidly expanding company. Andrea Appella, Associate General Counsel Europe, Middle East, Asia Andrea Appella is a leading expert on competition and regulatory law. He previously served as Head of Global Competition at Netflix and Deputy General Counsel at 21st Century Fox. He is OpenAI's first legal hire in London and will oversee the company's strategy when it comes to regulatory issues and antitrust inquiries in Europe and beyond. Regulatory scrutiny could prove to be one of the biggest existential threats for the growing company as policymakers race to put guardrails on the nascent AI industry. Nowhere have lawmakers been more aggressive than in Europe, which is leading the world in AI regulations. That makes Appella's role as the company's top legal representative in Europe one of the most crucial positions in determining the company's future. Haidee Schwartz, Associate General Counsel, Competition OpenAI has spent that last year beefing up its legal team as it faces multiple antitrust probes. Schwartz, who joined the company in 2023, knows more about antitrust enforcement than almost anyone on Earth, having seen both sides of the issue during her storied legal career. Between 2017 and 2019, she served as the Acting Deputy Director of the Bureau of Competition at the Federal Trade Commission, one of the agencies currently investigating OpenAI's dominance within the AI industry. Schwartz also advised clients on merger review and antitrust enforcement as a partner at law firm Akin Gump. She'll likely play an important role in helping OpenAI navigate the potential minefield of antitrust scrutiny as the company expands its foothold in AI. Heather Whitney, Copyright Counsel Whitney joined OpenAI last January after the New York Times filed a major copyright lawsuit against the company and its corporate backer, Microsoft. It's one of many legal challenges brought by publishers alleging that OpenAI violated copyright laws when it used books and journalistic work to train its AI models. The outcomes of these lawsuits, which raise unprecedented questions about intellectual property in the age of AI, will be essential in determining OpenAI prospects going forward. Whitney comes to OpenAI from the law firm Morrison Foerster, where she focused on novel copyright issues related to AI and served on the firm's AI Steering Committee. Morrison Foerster is one of the many outside law firms representing OpenAI and Whitney had been working with the company before being hired outright. She is an expert on intellectual property law and AI and has lectured and done research on the subject at Harvard Law School and the University of Chicago Law School. She is also currently completing a PhD in copyright, free speech theory, and AI at NYU. Chan Park, Head of U.S. and Canada Policy and Partnerships OpenAI last November registered Park as its first in-house lobbyist. Park previously served as senior director of congressional affairs at Microsoft and is now helping to lead OpenAI's outreach to lawmakers. Over the last year OpenAI has expanded its lobbying efforts as it seeks to build relationships in government and influence the development of AI policy. That has included enlisting high-powered law firms and at least one former US senator to plead OpenAI's case in Washington. Park has been helping to guide those efforts from within OpenAI as the company continues to sharpen its message around responsible development of AI. Anna Makanju, VP of Global Impact Referred to as OpenAI's de facto foreign minister, Makanju was responsible for organizing Sam Altman's global charm offensive, during which he met with leaders around the world to discuss the future of AI. This move is part of a broader effort to make Altman the friendly face of the budding AI industry and ensure that OpenAI will have a seat at the table when it comes to designing AI regulations and policies. Makanju, a veteran of Starlink and Facebook who also served as a special policy advisor to President Biden, has been integral in that effort. In addition to helping Altman introduce himself on the world stage, she has played an important role in expanding OpenAI's commercial partnerships in the public sector. Chris Lehane, VP of Global Affairs Lehane joined OpenAI earlier this year to help the company liaise with policymakers and navigate the complex political landscape emerging around artificial intelligence. The veteran political operative and "spin master" played a similar role at Airbnb, where he served as Head of Global Policy and Public Affairs from 2015 to 2022 and helped the rapidly expanding company counter opposition from local authorities. He served in the Clinton White House, where Newsweek referred to him as a "master of disaster" for his handling of the many scandals and political crises that plagued the administration. Lehane will undoubtedly play an important role in expanding and nurturing OpenAI's relationships in Washington.