--- title: Brad Lightcap is leaving OpenAI after eight years to... description: Brad Lightcap, OpenAI's COO for four years and an eight-year company veteran, announced he is leaving to start a new venture. He built much of OpenAI's... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/brad-lightcap-is-leaving-openai-after-eight-years-to-start-something-new-jbvwbki7h twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Brad Lightcap is leaving OpenAI after eight years to start something new | daily.dev og:description: Brad Lightcap, OpenAI's COO for four years and an eight-year company veteran, announced he is leaving to start a new venture. He built much of OpenAI's... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/brad-lightcap-is-leaving-openai-after-eight-years-to-start-something-new-jbvwbki7h og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/jbVWBKI7h.png og:image:alt: Brad Lightcap is leaving OpenAI after eight years to start something new og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Brad Lightcap is leaving OpenAI after eight years to start something new **[The Next Web](https://daily.dev/sources/tnw)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Brad Lightcap, OpenAI's COO for four years and an eight-year company veteran, announced he is leaving to start a new venture. He built much of OpenAI's operational and business infrastructure, including finance, legal, partnerships, and the $4bn+ Deployment Company. His departure comes one day after OpenAI closed a $7bn employee tender offer valuing the company at $852bn and reportedly two months after a confidential IPO filing. Lightcap is the ninth senior leader to leave since April, a wave that includes the chief product officer, Sora architect, chief marketing officer, chief futurist, safety systems head, and AI ethics head. Sam Altman has not publicly commented on the departure, which is noted as unusual. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How many senior OpenAI executives have left since spring and who are they? Nine senior figures left OpenAI in roughly four months. They include COO Brad Lightcap, chief product officer Kevin Weil, Sora architect Bill Peebles, enterprise CTO Srinivas Narayanan, chief marketing officer Kate Rouch, Barret Zoph, Fidji Simo (stepped to part-time advisory), safety systems head Johannes Heidecke, AI ethics head Chloé Bakalar, and chief futurist Joshua Achiam. Bakalar was OpenAI's only dedicated ethicist and has not been replaced. _Teams tracking leadership stability at major AI labs find the full picture faster on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [OpenAI is bringing on some big guns in the lead-up to its IPO](https://daily.dev/posts/openai-is-bringing-on-some-big-guns-in-the-lead-up-to-its-ipo-fcfep9aoq) · TechCrunch · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Who really runs OpenAI now?](https://daily.dev/posts/who-really-runs-openai-now--vjoxf7keu) · The Verge · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#startup](https://daily.dev/tags/startup), [#openai](https://daily.dev/tags/openai) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/brad-lightcap-is-leaving-openai-after-eight-years-to-start-something-new-jbvwbki7h) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Brad Lightcap is leaving OpenAI after eight years to start something new","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/brad-lightcap-is-leaving-openai-after-eight-years-to-start-something-new-jbvwbki7h","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/brad-lightcap-is-leaving-openai-after-eight-years-to-start-something-new-jbvwbki7h"},"datePublished":"2026-08-12T09:11:51.218Z","dateModified":"2026-08-15T19:10:13.409Z","description":"Brad Lightcap, OpenAI's COO for four years and an eight-year company veteran, announced he is leaving to start a new venture. 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They include COO Brad Lightcap, chief product officer Kevin Weil, Sora architect Bill Peebles, enterprise CTO Srinivas Narayanan, chief marketing officer Kate Rouch, Barret Zoph, Fidji Simo (stepped to part-time advisory), safety systems head Johannes Heidecke, AI ethics head Chloé Bakalar, and chief futurist Joshua Achiam. Bakalar was OpenAI's only dedicated ethicist and has not been replaced. Teams tracking leadership stability at major AI labs find the full picture faster on daily.dev."}}]} ```