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- OpenAI is hiring Sarah Friar and Kevin Weil to join its C-suite.
- Friar, who most recently served as CEO of Nextdoor, will be its chief financial officer.
- Weil joins from Planet Labs and will be the chief product officer.
Sam Altman will have some top-tier talent joining him in the OpenAI C-suite.
The company announced Monday that Sarah Friar and Kevin Weil will be its new chief financial officer and chief product officer, respectively.
"Sarah and Kevin bring a depth of experience that will enable OpenAI to scale our operations, set a strategy for the next phase of growth, and ensure that our teams have the resources they need to continue to thrive," Altman said in the announcement.
In a post on X, Weil called OpenAI's mission "perhaps the most important and transformative of them all."
I’m super excited to announce that I’m joining @OpenAI as Chief Product Officer!
— Kevin Weil 🇺🇸 (@kevinweil) June 10, 2024
My entire career has been about working on big missions: connecting people and ideas at @Instagram and @Twitter, digitizing financial services at Libra/Novi, or most recently at @Planet, using space…
Friar was most recently CEO of Nextdoor and had previously served as Square's CFO. She has also worked at Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and Salesforce.
Weil was the head of product and business for Planet Labs, as well as the cofounder of the Libra cryptocurrency, the vice president of product for Novi at Facebook, the vice president of product at Instagram, and the senior vice president of product at Twitter.
The announcement comes after OpenAI — and Altman's leadership in particular — has received scrutiny because of safety concerns as AI evolves.
"The world isn't ready, and we aren't ready," Daniel Kokotajlo, a former OpenAI researcher, wrote in an email announcing his resignation, The New York Times reported. "I'm concerned we are rushing forward regardless and rationalizing our actions."
Several other researchers have resigned from OpenAI as concerns mount about its governance and whether it's moving toward a more profit-oriented approach.
In a statement, Friar said: "My goal is to help OpenAI continue excelling at what it does best — producing top-tier research and collaborating to maximize the benefits of AI tools for everyone."