OpenAI has reportedly lost another senior executive. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Chris Malone, who was responsible for the tech giant’s data center operations, has left the firm. His exit comes at a time when the company is gearing up for its AI infrastructure expansion.
Malone had joined the organisation last year. Before 2025, he was working at Meta and Google. His reported departure comes roughly a year after he had joined OpenAI. Malone’s role was particularly important because OpenAI is investing heavily in the computing infrastructure needed to train and run its increasingly powerful AI models.
He joined the company shortly after the launch of the Stargate Project, a major US data center initiative involving OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia, SoftBank and Microsoft.
Reportedly, the project aims to expand AI infrastructure in the US, making the leadership of OpenAI’s data center operations a closely watched position. The exact reason for Malone’s departure has not been made public.
Malone’s exit also follows a change in how OpenAI’s infrastructure team was organised. According to the WSJ report, Malone stopped reporting directly to OpenAI President Greg Brockman and instead began reporting to OpenAI Vice President Sachin Katti. Katti subsequently took over leadership of the group.
Several executives are now involved in different parts of OpenAI’s data center operations. As per the report, Uday Ruddarraju leads the company’s data center team, while Brent Mayo oversees data center construction and delivery. Spas Lazarov, who has experience in the data center and energy sectors, is responsible for data center engineering.
Malone’s exit is part of a much larger wave of leadership changes at OpenAI this year. One of the most recent changes involved Denise Dresser, who left her position as OpenAI’s chief revenue officer after around eight months at the company.
Brad Lightcap, one of OpenAI’s longest-serving executives and its former chief operating officer, also left shortly before Dresser’s departure. Lightcap said he would be “starting something new”, although he has not revealed what he plans to do next.
For now, OpenAI has not publicly explained why Malone left. His departure nevertheless adds another major name to a growing list of senior executives who have exited the company in 2026.
