OpenAI is expanding chief operating officer Brad Lightcap’s role to oversee the company’s day-to-day operations.
“Brad and I have worked together for the past 9 years,” OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, wrote in a company blog post on Monday. “What he has done so far at OpenAI is extraordinary and I look forward to much more in this expanded role.”
Lightcap will also head the company’s global deployment, including partnerships and infrastructure, the post said. Late last year, San Francisco-based OpenAI announced it would open offices in New York City, Seattle, Paris, Brussels, and Singapore, in addition to existing locations in London, Dublin, and Tokyo.
Lightcap’s expanded role was announced along with two other leadership changes: Mark Chen was assigned more responsibility in his chief research officer role, and Julia Villagra was named chief people officer.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.
Lightcap joined the artificial intelligence company in 2018 and was previously the chief financial officer. Before OpenAI, he worked with Altman at startup accelerator Y Combinator.
Last year, the OpenAI COO said that large language models and AI chatbots would be capable of “more complex work” in a short period of time.
“In the next couple of 12 months, I think the systems that we use today will be laughably bad,” Lightcap said in May at the Milken Institute Global Conference. “We think we’re going to move toward a world where they’re much more capable.”
Like Altman, Lightcap has also said that he prefers a flat leadership style, in which everyone is free to share ideas.
“The really really good ideas come from unexpected places on the team, not from like the most experienced end of the team,” he said on an episode of the 20VC podcast last April. “My advice is: Find a way to make sure that there’s this very flat, very even playing field.”
The responsibility changes at the company follow a series of leadership shake-ups at the ChatGPT maker.
Last year, chief technological officer Mira Murati and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever announced their departures. Jan Leike, who co-led OpenAI’s superalignment group — a team that focuses on making its AI systems align with human interests — left the company for Anthropic last May.
OpenAI is involved in a $500 billion AI joint venture called Stargate with SoftBank, Oracle, and other investors. The project, announced by President Donald Trump in January, aims to invest in AI infrastructure in the US over the next four years.
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