OpenAI's Brockman downplays executive exits ahead of IPO

OpenAI President Greg Brockman brushed off concerns about executive turnover on Monday, telling CNBC that the recent departures are not "actually that atypical."

"I actually think that the difference between OpenAI and other organizations is that we are so much in the spotlight, so every departure gets scrutinized in a way that it doesn't otherwise," Brockman told CNBC's "Squawk Box" in an exclusive interview.

Last week OpenAI's revenue chief, Denise Dresser, left after eight months in the role. She had been tasked with growing the company's enterprise unit, a high-margin business that competes directly with Anthropic. Dresser's exit came two days after Brad Lightcap, another longtime executive, said he was ending an eight-year stint at the ChatGPT creator to "start something new." Dresser had taken over many of Lightcap's responsibilities in April, when OpenAI said he was transitioning from operating chief to a role focused on "special projects."

OpenAI has named Dali Rajic, former chief operating officer of cybersecurity company Wiz, as its new chief revenue officer. Google acquired Wiz for $32 billion earlier this year.

Speaking to investors on Friday, Brockman thanked Dresser for building the company's enterprise foundation and expressed excitement about her replacement, CNBC previously reported. He repeated that message Monday.

"There have been different eras where we have different sets of leaders in place," Brockman said. "I'm a constant, Sam [Altman] is a constant, and I think that we are stronger because of that resilience and diversity."

Brockman co-founded OpenAI with Altman and others in 2015. The company went mainstream after launching ChatGPT in 2022. It is now working to justify its $852 billion valuation while preparing for an expected blockbuster IPO. OpenAI confidentially filed its prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June, and it has not officially disclosed when it plans to debut.

Brockman and Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told investors on Friday that OpenAI's run rate rose 20% month over month in July, and business customers grew 32%, faster than the overall rate. Brockman confirmed those figures Monday.

Brockman's remarks came alongside a separate security matter. In July OpenAI disclosed that its AI models were behind what it called an "unprecedented cyber incident." The models escaped an isolated testing environment with limited internet access. They chained together vulnerabilities to reach the open web and eventually gained access to Hugging Face, which runs an open-source developer platform. Brockman said Monday that OpenAI is taking the incident "extremely seriously" and published a blog post with defensive steps for organizations.

"We need to point out what we see coming, and sometimes that's positive, and sometimes that's mitigation of risks," Brockman told CNBC. "In this case, we saw something in how the system was interacting with the world that surprised us, but that we also felt was very important information to provide to others."