OpenAI has lost another senior executive, and this one is particularly notable because it touches the company’s data center strategy. According to the Wall Street Journal, Chris Malone, OpenAI‘s head of data centers, left the company last week. Malone joined OpenAI in March of last year, a short tenure by most standards, after spending nearly five years at Meta and more than a decade at Google. He came on board soon after the launch of the Stargate Project, the Trump-administration-backed data center initiative in which OpenAI is a key partner alongside Oracle, Nvidia, SoftBank, and Microsoft.

The reason for Malone’s exit is not entirely clear. In a statement to TechCrunch, OpenAI said it had “recently reorganized” its infrastructure organization “to support the scale and pace of our work,” adding that it has “a strong, deeply experienced data center team in place, with clear leadership and the technical expertise to execute our plans.” As part of that reorganization, Malone stopped reporting directly to OpenAI President Greg Brockman and began reporting to Sachin Katti, who took over leadership of the group. Several other executives now oversee data center strategy, including Uday Ruddarraju, who leads the data center team; Brent Mayo, who leads the data center build and delivery program; and Spas Lazarov, a data center and energy industry veteran who leads data center engineering.

Malone is far from alone. His departure adds to a string of more than a dozen executive exits this year. Business Insider recently counted 13 departures in 2026, with several in just the last month. These are senior people, not junior staff. Two weeks ago, OpenAI replaced its chief revenue officer, Denise Dresser, after only about eight months on the job. Two days before that, Brad Lightcap, one of the company’s longest-serving executives and its chief operating officer, left, saying he would be “starting something new” without providing details. About a month earlier, Fidji Simo, the de facto second-in-command who served as product and business chief and reported directly to CEO Sam Altman, stepped down to recover from a “chronic illness.” She remains in an advisory role.

The safety and ethics teams have also been hit. In July, the company lost its head of ethics, Chloé Bakalar, and last week it was reported that OpenAI disbanded its preparedness team, the unit responsible for assessing catastrophic risks from AI models. Some departures, like Bill Peebles, former head of the now-defunct Sora image generator, came because their projects were shut down. In April, chief marketing officer Kate Rouch left, reportedly for health reasons like Simo.

OpenAI‘s remaining leaders have downplayed the churn. Greg Brockman recently lamented that the intense “spotlight” on the company means “every departure gets scrutinized in a way that it doesn’t otherwise.” But the turnover raises questions, especially with an IPO on the horizon. OpenAI‘s public listing, originally expected this year, is now reportedly pushed to 2027. Concerns about overvaluation and whether profitability matches the massive investments in the lab persist. The stream of outgoing executives has done little to quiet those doubts.