Overview
- Chris Malone, who led OpenAI’s data center efforts after joining in March 2025, left the company, which CNBC confirmed Tuesday and which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
- OpenAI says it recently reorganized its infrastructure organization and has a deeply experienced data center team in place, but it has not named a successor or given a public reason for Malone’s departure.
- Before he left, Malone’s unit was restructured so he reported to Vice President Sachin Katti rather than President Greg Brockman, and responsibility for build and engineering was distributed to leaders including Uday Ruddarraju, Brent Mayo and Spas Lazarov.
- Malone oversaw a shift away from exclusive reliance on the multi‑partner Stargate joint venture toward leasing more capacity from cloud providers, a strategic change that affects how OpenAI secures the GPUs and power needed to run large models.
- The change in leadership and strategy deepens scrutiny of OpenAI’s capacity, timelines and regional access for customers as the company readies an IPO and pursues very large compute spending plans linked to projects with Microsoft, Oracle, Nvidia and SoftBank.