OpenAI has spent months in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. A jury trial against Elon Musk, a trade secrets lawsuit from Apple, and an unreported model that reportedly hacked a rival AI company all made headlines. Now the company is preparing for an IPO while top executives keep walking out the door.
Through all of it, one person has quietly gained more power. That person is Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president and cofounder. His title has not changed in years, but his job description has grown by a wide margin. Brockman now sits as second-in-command behind CEO Sam Altman.
In practice, Brockman is the one running day-to-day operations at the company. A new report from The Verge describes him as “the big boss” when it comes to daily decisions. Altman keeps the CEO title, but much of the hands-on leadership now falls to Brockman.
Brockman has been ambitious since the early days. In a 2017 journal entry, he wrote about a personal financial goal. “Financially what will take me to $1B?” he mused. His current stake in OpenAI is worth nearly thirty times that figure.
The leadership churn started accelerating in April. Bill Peebles, the former head of Sora, left that month. Kevin Weil, VP of the science arm, and Srinivas Narayanan, CTO of B2B applications, also departed. CMO Kate Rouch and Fidji Simo, CEO of AGI deployment, stepped away for medical reasons.
Brockman has helped lead OpenAI since it was founded. Colleagues described him as an “engineering workhorse” who pushed to build the scaled systems that trained the models. That technical background now shapes how he runs the company.
The bigger question is what this means for OpenAI’s future. The company is chasing an IPO while its leadership table keeps shifting. Brockman’s rising influence signals stability for investors, but it also concentrates power in fewer hands.
OpenAI is not the only AI lab facing pressure. OpenAI has also been gaining ground on Anthropic with business users, a sign the competition is heating up. The company is racing to lock down enterprise customers before rivals do.
Read the full report at The Verge.
