OpenAI Hires Ex-Nextdoor CEO Friar as CFO

On Monday, OpenAI announced that it had appointed Sarah Friar, the former CEO of social media company Nextdoor, as its inaugural chief financial officer

Additionally, the artificial intelligence company has appointed Kevin Weil as its chief product officer. Weil has previously held positions at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Friar was previously the Chief Financial Officer at Square and is a member of Walmart’s board. Additionally, she has held positions at Salesforce and Goldman Sachs McKinsey.

“Sarah and Kevin bring a depth of experience that will enable OpenAI to scale our operations, set a strategy for the next phase of growth, and ensure that our teams have the resources they need to continue to thrive,” Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, stated in a statement on the following day.

Jakub Pachocki succeeded Ilya Sutskever, the co-founder and chief scientist of OpenAI, who departed in May. The new appointments are a result of his departure.

Pachocki was previously the director of research at OpenAI, overseeing the development of OpenAI Five and GPT-4.
In November of the previous year, Sutskever was instrumental in Altman’s dramatic dismissal and subsequent rehiring.

Sutskever was a member of the OpenAI board at the time and played a role in orchestrating Altman’s termination.

A few days later, he changed his stance, signing an employee letter that demanded Altman’s return and expressed remorse for his “participation in the board’s actions.”

After Altman’s return, Sutskever was removed from the board, and his position at the company became uncertain.
In February, Andrej Karpathy, an artificial intelligence researcher and one of the founding members of OpenAI, departed the organization.

In March, OpenAI announced the appointment of new directors, including Altman, Sue Desmond-Hellmann, a former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Nicole Seligman, a former president of Sony Entertainment, and Fidji Simo, CEO of Instacart.