OpenAI is witnessing several high-profile exits at a crucial moment for the artificial intelligence startup prepping to hit the public market like Elon Musk’s SpaceX in what could be another “blockbuster” IPO in the tech world. Amid the ongoing reshuffling, OpenAI’s Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser announced Thursday (US time) that she is quitting her post less than a year after joining the Sam Altman-led lab.
Dresser, who is departing amicably to “pursue other opportunities,” is the second senior executive at the company to leave in days. Just earlier this week, OpenAI’s longtime executive Brad Lightcap revealed on Tuesday that he was leaving the AI lab to “start something new,” according to an X post. Surprisingly, Dresser had even been tasked to take on some of Lightcap’s duties merely months ago, when the company announced that the outgoing longtime executive would switch to a new role dealing with “special projects.”
This year’s exodus comes after Sam Altman’s company already witnessed a year of senior leaders’ departures in 2025. The drastic shakeup was especially devastating for OpenAI, which lost more than half a dozen researchers to its industry rival Meta last summer.
OpenAI loses its revenue chief
Denise Dresser, hired by OpenAI in December 2025 after spending over a decade at Salesforce, took to her LinkedIn to shed more light on her decision to leave the company in the coming weeks.
In a forward-looking tone, she shared the message she sent to her team on Thursday.
“I wanted to let you know that I made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI in the coming weeks to pursue other opportunities,” she began the note, according to her LinkedIn post.
Expressing gratitude to her team members, she reminisced about the good times spent at OpenAI while working “hands-on with the most transformative technology in the world.” Giving herself and her colleagues a pat on the back for their accomplishments, she thanked everyone for their trust, partnership, hard work and energy.
Dresser further noted that the team surpassed expectations in maintaining an extraordinary pace of work while delivering value to customers.
“I’ve been working with @gdb to ensure a smooth transition as we’ve discussed the future needs of the business,” she said, referring to OpenAI co-founder and President Greg Brockman. “He will share more about those plans shortly. I will still be here for a bit continuing to partner with the team and our customers as we make this change. If you need anything, please reach out on Slack anytime.”
According to a company release, OpenAI has brought on Dali Rajic, the former president and chief operating officer of the cybersecurity company Wiz, to succeed Dresser.
OpenAI executives leave amid IPO preparation
Denise Dresser and Brad Lightcap are among a dozen prominent leaders headed to the exit door at OpenAI in 2026.
Others on the list are:
- OpenAI’s CEO of applications, Fidji Simo, is transitioning to a part-time advisor role.
- Former chief product officer Kevin Weil, who eventually started OpenAI or Science and became the initiative’s vice president
- Bill Peebles, research scientist serving as the head of now-defunct AI model Sora
- Srinivas Narayanan, OpenAI’s chief technology officer for business applications
- Kate Rouch, OpenAI’s chief marketing officer
- Barret Zoph, OpenAI’s VP of Research (Post-Training)
- Chloé Bakalar, OpenAI’s head of ethics
- Johannes Heidecke, leader of OpenAI’s safety systems team
- Joshua Achiam, OpenAI’s chief futurist
- Caitlin Kalinowski, leader of OpenAI’s robotics and consumer hardware team
All 12 announced their exits ahead of the company’s potentially “blockbuster” Nasdaq debut. Days after Anthropic filed its IPO prospectus with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), OpenAI did the same in June. After closing a funding round in March at a massive $852 billion valuation, the AI company silently filed for an IPO.
While reports have indicated that OpenAI is gearing up to go public as soon as the year’s fourth quarter, OpenAI didn’t openly lay out a timeline at the time.
In a post shared around the time of the submission, the artificial intelligence lab wrote, “We recently submitted a confidential S-1. We expect it to leak so we’re just announcing it. We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs, and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best.”
Pressure for immense success has especially been building up for AI companies as the advanced tech keeps soaring to new heights. On top of that, SpaceX’s historic IPO in June, which briefly turned CEO Elon Musk into the world’s first trillionaire, is only adding to competition anxiety for rival companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.