OpenAI is facing growing management turmoil after around five organizational changes since the beginning of 2026, as CEO Sam Altman seeks to prepare the company for an initial public offering that could become one of the largest in the history of the technology sector. According to people familiar with the matter who spoke to the Financial Times, repeated restructuring and leadership resignations have frustrated some employees.
Executives Depart Within a Short Period
Denise Dresser, the chief revenue officer, announced her departure from OpenAI this week, after being appointed last December to work on expanding the corporate customer base. She was preceded by the resignations of Brad Lightcap, the former chief financial and operating officer, and Chloe Bacalar, the head of ethics, both of whom left less than a year after taking up their positions.
Fidji Simo, who ran the applications division and was considered one of the most influential executives after Altman, also left her executive role last month following medical leave and moved to an advisory position. The newspaper says she remains in intensive contact with employees and participates in some internal matters, while one person familiar with the situation believes she continues to play an influential behind-the-scenes role.
Redistributing Model Safety Responsibilities
The changes included dissolving the Preparedness team, which assessed the possibility that the company's models could cause severe or catastrophic risks and developed measures to mitigate them. Rather than retaining the team as an independent unit, preparedness responsibilities were distributed among multiple teams, with areas such as cybersecurity risks and biological threats assigned to different leaders.
The move comes as part of an effort to simplify the structure and focus on ChatGPT while competing with Anthropic in the enterprise customer market. Greg Brockman said OpenAI's technological advances require stronger safeguards, adding that the company seeks to integrate research, safety and security more deeply into model development.
What Does This Mean for the Company?
These shifts leave OpenAI facing a practical trade-off between accelerating product development and expanding commercial activity on one hand, and maintaining independent structures for reviewing risks on the other. Dissolving the Preparedness team alone does not prove that safety has become a lower priority, because the company says the responsibilities have been redistributed; however, it changes the organizational body responsible for these matters and the way they are managed.
The IPO and Competition for Revenue
Some employees believe the pace of restructuring reflects turmoil during a sensitive period, as a potential public offering could raise OpenAI's valuation to around $1 trillion. The offering was expected to take place during 2026, but according to people familiar with the company's plans, the move now appears more likely to occur in 2027.
Meanwhile, competition with Anthropic is intensifying. OpenAI's estimated annualized revenue rose from around $24 billion at the end of last year to nearly $40 billion in August 2026, while Anthropic's estimated revenue jumped from $9 billion at the end of 2025 to $47 billion in May, continuing to grow since then.
The latest resignations point to a pattern that has previously emerged within OpenAI, where some executives moved to private ventures or new roles before leaving the company. The company has also continued to reshape its management since the leadership crisis that temporarily ousted Altman in late 2023, as Brockman's influence has grown and some senior positions remain vacant.