OpenAI Exodus: Altman Holds Firm Amid Executive Departures

OpenAI has lost a string of senior executives this year, among them chief technology officer Mira Murati, chief research officer Bob McGrew, and research chief Barret Zoph, all of whom departed within days of each other back in September. Each exit prompted a fresh round of speculation about instability at the top of the company. But look at the org chart now and a different pattern shows up: cofounder and president Greg Brockman keeps picking up the pieces. He now oversees the entire consumer and enterprise product lines, ChatGPT and Codex included, plus the infrastructure build-out that underpins all of it.

Sam Altman remains CEO and the public face of OpenAI, but Brockman has become something closer to the day-to-day operator running the place. That shift matters beyond the org chart. OpenAI is losing enterprise ground to Anthropic, gearing up for a massive IPO, and still chasing profitability while trying to unseat Google Search and the iPhone as the default way people touch the internet. Verge senior AI reporter Hayden Field has been tracking these moves closely, and on this episode of Decoder, she walks through what Brockman's expanded role actually means for OpenAI's strategy.