OpenAI Hires Former Member of Twitter as CPO, Nextdoor CEO as CFO

OpenAI has reportedly hired two new executives to serve as its chief finance officer and chief product officer. Sarah Friar, former CEO of Nextdoor, has been hired as OpenAI's first CFO, while Kevin Weil, a former member of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, has been hired as CPO.

Friar allegedly served as CFO at Square and is a member of Walmart's board. She formerly worked at McKinsey, Salesforce, and Goldman Sachs. Friar was the latest CEO of the social networking platform Nextdoor, a position she held for nearly five years before resigning this year.

Friar will help the company expand in a hard operating environment, based on an OpenAI article posted on Monday.

Dotdash Meredith Enhances Ad-Targeting with OpenAI Partnership — Dotdash Meredith is the latest news organization that closed a deal with OpenAI to bring its magazine to its readers. The deal's terms are not disclosed yet.
(Photo : Levart_Photographer from Unsplash)

According to Josh Baskins, founding partner of the hiring company SB Search Partners, OpenAI's pick of CFO suggests that it may be planning a public offering.

Friar has also faced issues common to many startups' finance departments, such as interacting with investors, developing back-office accounting systems, and imposing financial discipline in a rapidly growing organization, according to Baskins.

OpenAI recently appointed Kevin Weil as chief product officer to manage a team that would apply its research to goods and services. He was the president of product and business at Planet Labs, a Google-backed satellite imaging firm, as well as vice president of product at Facebook's unsuccessful digital wallet Novi and senior vice president of product at Twitter.

OpenAI Boom

Over the last year, OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, has formed relationships with major corporations, including Apple, which said Monday that it would offer ChatGPT for certain new capabilities, such as answering complicated inquiries or creating messages.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has spent billions of dollars in the firm with the goal of expanding the use of artificial intelligence in its products.

OpenAI's Ilya Sutskever

OpenAI's new leadership hires come after its co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, left the AI giant due to a "personally meaningful" project, leaving Jakub Pachocki to assume his position.

Sutskever noted at the time that he will reveal details on his future project after leaving OpenAI "in due time." Under the present leadership, the co-founder stated that he is still hopeful that OpenAI could build helpful and safe artificial general intelligence.

Altman commented on the departure, stating that he was profoundly disappointed by the news but praised Jakub as Sutskever's replacement.

Altman claims that OpenAI would not exist in its current form without Sutskever. Even though Altman is moving on to something more personal, he says he will always be grateful for Sutskever's contributions to the firm.

In a statement naming Sutskever's replacement, Altman lauded Jakub, describing him as "one of the greatest minds" of this age and expressing confidence that he will oversee OpenAI in ensuring that AGI benefits everyone quickly and safely.