OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap leaves to start a new venture
Brad Lightcap is leaving OpenAI to start a new venture as the ChatGPT maker prepares for a public listing. He had joined in 2018 and served four years as COO.
Brad Lightcap said he was leaving OpenAI to start a new venture, marking another senior departure as the ChatGPT maker moved toward a public listing amid strong demand for artificial intelligence.
Lightcap told employees in a note that he planned to step away from the company, and he said he would remain for a few more weeks during the transition. OpenAI has not named a successor. Lightcap has been described as the company’s chief operating officer and, in some recent coverage, as a special projects lead or former COO.
He joined OpenAI in 2018 and served as its COO for four years. During that period, his role widened well beyond operations. On March 24, 2025, CNBC reported that OpenAI expanded Lightcap’s job to include business oversight, and other coverage at the time described him as overseeing business, operations and strategic partnerships across research, applied AI and go-to-market work, while also managing the OpenAI Startup Fund.
By late May 2025, Lightcap was publicly outlining the company’s commercial momentum. In a Wall Street Journal event appearance on May 30, he discussed OpenAI’s surge in enterprise growth, partnerships with the United Arab Emirates and Moderna, and the company’s plans for an AI device and other products. Those remarks placed him at the center of OpenAI’s push to turn research breakthroughs into revenue, partnerships and new hardware.
His exit comes as OpenAI faces the same pressure that has followed its rapid expansion: keeping top executives in place while scaling a business that now sits at the center of the AI race. The company is gearing up to go public while AI demand continues to climb, making leadership stability and product execution more visible than ever.
Lightcap’s departure also underscores how much OpenAI has relied on a relatively small group of senior executives to manage both internal operations and external growth. With no replacement announced, the move leaves a key business role open at a moment when OpenAI is balancing enterprise sales, new product development and the demands of a possible market debut.
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