OpenAI Appoints Sarah Friar as CFO to Navigate Growth in AI Industry

OpenAI said on Monday it has hired Sarah Friar, the former CEO of social media firm Nextdoor, as its first chief financial officer. The artificial intelligence firm has also hired Kevin Weil, who previously worked at Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, as chief product officer. Friar previously served as CFO at Square and is also a member of Walmart's board. She has also previously worked at Goldman Sachs, McKinsey and Salesforce. "Sarah and Kevin bring a depth of experience that will enable OpenAI to scale our operations, strategize for the next phase of growth, and ensure our teams have the resources they need to continue growing," said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. A statement on Monday.

The new appointments follow the departure in May of OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who was replaced by Jacob Pachocki. Pachocki previously served as OpenAI's Director of Research and led the development of GPT-4 and OpenAI Five. Sutskever played a key role in Altman's dramatic firing and rehiring in November of last year. At the time, Sutskever was on OpenAI's board and helped orchestrate Altman's firing.

Days later, he reversed course, signing an employee letter demanding Altman's return and expressing regret for his "participation in board actions." After Altman returned, Sutskever was removed from the board and his position at the company became unclear. Andrej Karpathy, an artificial intelligence researcher and one of OpenAI's founding members, left the company in February. OpenAI said in March it was hiring new directors, including Altman, former Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Sue Desmond-Hellman, former Sony Entertainment president Nicole Seligman and Instacart CEO Fidji Simo.