OpenAI's data centre chief exits in the company's 13th senior departure this year
Chris Malone leaves after 16 months and a reorganisation moved him off reporting to Greg Brockman; his responsibilities now split across three separate leaders.
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- Chris Malone, OpenAI's head of data centers since March 2025, departed last week after an infrastructure reorganisation reassigned him from reporting to President Greg Brockman to reporting to VP Sachin Katti.
- His responsibilities are now split among three leaders: Uday Ruddarraju on the data center team, Brent Mayo on build and delivery, and Spas Lazarov on data center engineering.
- It is the 13th senior executive departure at OpenAI in 2026, following Fidji Simo, Brad Lightcap, Denise Dresser and Kate Rouch among others.
- OpenAI said: "We have a strong, deeply experienced data center team in place, with clear leadership and the technical expertise to execute our plans."
Chris Malone, OpenAI's head of data centers, has left the company after roughly 16 months in the role, TechCrunch reported. Malone joined OpenAI in March 2025 following close to five years at Meta and more than a decade at Google, and had reported directly to President Greg Brockman until an infrastructure reorganisation moved him under Chief Technology and Product Officer Sachin Katti. His departure followed shortly after that change.
Malone's responsibilities have been redistributed rather than replaced by a single successor: Uday Ruddarraju now leads the data center team, Brent Mayo manages the build and delivery program, and Spas Lazarov oversees data center engineering. OpenAI has committed to spending roughly $600 billion on compute infrastructure by 2030, making the leadership of that build-out a materially consequential role to leave unfilled by one clear successor.
The exit is the 13th senior departure at OpenAI so far in 2026, in a list that includes Fidji Simo (Product & Business Chief, July), Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap (August), Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser after an eight-month tenure (August), Chief Marketing Officer Kate Rouch (April), and Head of Ethics Chloé Bakalar (July). OpenAI's statement addressed the specific role rather than the pattern: "We have a strong, deeply experienced data center team in place, with clear leadership and the technical expertise to execute our plans."
The turnover comes as OpenAI has confidentially filed for an IPO and is targeting a public listing by 2027 — a period in which prospective investors typically read executive stability as a signal about the company they are being asked to price.
A 13th senior departure in one year is no longer a personnel story about one executive; it is a pattern investors evaluating OpenAI's IPO filing will have to underwrite, and the data center role specifically sits on top of a $600 billion infrastructure commitment with no single named leader now accountable for it. For any company with a large committed compute contract running through OpenAI, the practical question raised is continuity of execution on build-out timelines, not the reasons any one executive gave for leaving.