OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman has returned to the company as president, three months after announcing he would take a sabbatical until the end of the year.
He posted on X, calling his time away the “longest vacation” of his life and noting he was “back to building OpenAI.”
Brockman’s return follows OpenAI’s recent $157 billion valuation from its latest funding round, which closed over a month ago. During his absence, the company saw a wave of executive departures and faced growing scrutiny over its upcoming transition to a for-profit structure and the decision to close certain safety teams.
In late September, OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati announced she would be leaving after six and a half years with the company. That same day, Bob McGrew, head of research, and research VP Barret Zoph also announced their exits. Other departures included co-founder Ilya Sutskever and former safety lead Jan Leike, who joined rival Anthropic in May, as well as co-founder John Schulman and, more recently, Lilian Weng, vice president of research and safety, after seven years at OpenAI.
A close ally of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Brockman was with Altman when OpenAI launched as a nonprofit in 2015, with Brockman serving as CTO. Last year, following Altman’s temporary firing, Brockman briefly quit in protest, expressing shock and disappointment at the board’s decision before Altman was quickly reinstated.
