OpenAI has bid farewell to yet another high-profile executive, and this one's exit is particularly eyebrow-raising given that he was the person in charge of making sure the company's data center plans actually happened. Chris Malone, OpenAI's former head of data centers, left last week, according to the Wall Street Journal. Malone, who spent nearly five years at Meta and over a decade at Google before joining OpenAI in March of last year, apparently decided that a short tenure was the way to go.

Malone came on board shortly after the launch of the Stargate Project - a $500 million data center initiative backed by the Trump administration to build data centers in the U.S. OpenAI, along with Oracle, Nvidia, SoftBank, and Microsoft, is a key partner in this grand endeavor. Why Malone left is a mystery, though with the AI infrastructure buildout frenzy sweeping the industry, data center strategy is one of the most watched roles at any AI lab, making turnover in that seat especially surprising.

OpenAI told TechCrunch that it had 'recently reorganized' its 'infrastructure organization to support the scale and pace of our work,' adding that it has 'a strong, deeply experienced data center team in place, with clear leadership and the technical expertise to execute our plans.' As part of this reorganization, Malone stopped reporting directly to OpenAI president Greg Brockman and began reporting to VP Sachin Katti, who took over the group. Several other execs are now overseeing data center strategy, including Uday Ruddarraju (data center team lead), Brent Mayo (data center build and delivery), and Spas Lazarov (data center engineering).

But Malone isn't alone in his exit. He's part of a string of more than a dozen executive departures this year, with Business Insider tallying 13 total departures in 2026, several in just the last month. These aren't junior employees - they're some of the company's most senior seats. Two weeks ago, OpenAI replaced chief revenue officer Denise Dresser after just eight months on the job. Two days before Dresser's departure, Brad Lightcap, a long-serving COO, announced he was 'starting something new' (details TBD). About a month before that, Fidji Simo, the de facto second-in-command, stepped down to recover from a 'chronic illness,' though she remains in an advisory role.

The safety and ethics teams have seen their own exodus: in July, head of ethics Chloé Bakalar left, and last week, OpenAI disbanded its preparedness team, which assessed catastrophic risks. Other leaders, like Bill Peebles of the now-defunct Sora image generator, left because their projects were shut down. In April, CMO Kate Rouch also left for health reasons.

OpenAI's remaining talent has tried to downplay the churn, with Greg Brockman lamenting that the 'spotlight' on the company means 'every departure gets scrutinized in a way that it doesn't otherwise.' But the turnover raises questions, especially as OpenAI prepares for an IPO, now reportedly pushed to 2027. Concerns about overvaluation and profitability persist, and the flood of outgoing execs certainly isn't quieting those doubts.