OpenAI appoints Sarah Friar as its first CFO

AI firm OpenAI names former Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar as first CFO and Kevil Weil as head of product

Artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI has named Sarah Friar as its first chief financial officer and Kevin Weil as chief product officer.

Both are Silicon Valley veterans, with Friar most recently serving as CEO of Nextdoor and previously CFO of Square.

Previously, she worked at Goldman Sachs, McKinsey and Salesforce.

Weil was most recently president of product and business at satellite imagery company Planet Labs and has also held leadership positions at Instagram and Twitter.

Expansion

“Sarah and Kevin bring deep experience that will enable OpenAI to scale our operations, strategize for the next phase of growth, and provide our teams with the resources they need to continue to grow,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman .

The appointments come as OpenAI, which started as a not-for-profit company and is still technically a for-profit subsidiary overseen by a not-for-profit board, is expanding its artificial intelligence offerings and establishing high-profile partnerships.

On Monday, the day the nominations were announced, Apple also announced an agreement with OpenAI that will see ChatGPT and other OpenAI tools integrated into iPhones, Macs and other Apple devices later this year.

In addition to its transition from nonprofit to for-profit, the company has seen significant leadership turmoil in recent months, including Altman’s shock firing and board reinstatement last November.

Ilya Sutskever, the company’s co-founder and one of the board members involved in the episode, remained on board as chief scientist, but he left in May and was replaced by Jakub Pachocki, previously the company’s research director.

Management departures

Sutskever helped lead a security team tasked with ensuring that advanced artificial intelligence did not turn against humans. The unit was disbanded and later replaced by another unit.

Jan Leike, who led the previous team with Sutskever, also left and posted a lengthy entry on X in which he criticized the company’s management.

Another founding member, artificial intelligence researcher Andrej Karpathy, left the company in February.