OpenAI data center chief leaves the company as exec exodus continues

Chris Malone, OpenAI's head of data centers, has left after seventeen months, with the company confirming the exit but giving no reason His responsibilities had already been split before he went, with his reporting line moved to VP Sachin Katti and the job now spread across three executives plus an unnamed CTO for computing capacity The move comes as OpenAI is reportedly reviving plans to lease entire facilities rather than build them, a shift from construction to procurement Chris Malone, the executive who ran OpenAI's data center buildout, has left the company.

The Wall Street Journal broke the story last week , and an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the departure to Bloomberg the same day.

Neither OpenAI nor Malone has given a reason for his departure or his next destination, and a message from Bloomberg to his LinkedIn account received no reply.

The top-level executive joined the company in March 2025, against the backdrop of OpenAI's Stargate announcement in January of the same year , a commitment to invest $500 billion in 10 gigawatts of US AI infrastructure over four years alongside SoftBank, Oracle and MGX.

A job cannibalized by changing priorities at the helm? With a total tenure of 17 months, a relatively short duration for the job, Malone arrived at a time when the job was incredibly demanding, as OpenAI fended off competition from rival Anthropic, a resurgent Google with its Gemini offerings, and what can perhaps be described as a love-hate relationship with Microsoft.

His exit may have been written on the wall weeks ago, according to the Wall Street Journal, which noted that Malone stopped reporting to OpenAI president Greg Brockman and began reporting to vice president Sachin Katti, who took over leadership of the group.

OpenAI has since appointed a chief technology officer to lead computing capacity, though it has not publicly named that person.

Responsibility for what Malone did is now spread across at least three people: Uday Ruddarraju leads the data center team, Brent Mayo runs the build-and-delivery program, and Spas Lazarov, who came from the data center and energy industries, leads data center engineering.

All of this indicates it wasn't a sudden vacancy to fill, but one that had been on the cards for some time.

This comes as reports indicate OpenAI is reviving data center initiatives involving leasing entire facilities, with others leading that effort.

This would mark a significant shift from its initial plans to get involved in the building side of the business, which it seems to have focused less on lately, and a major strategic shift in how the organization plans to operate in the future.