OpenAI Organizational Structure

About the company

OpenAI builds frontier AI models and the products layered on top of them — ChatGPT, the developer API, Codex and a growing enterprise line. It reported US$13.1 billion of revenue for 2025, employs roughly 4,500 people out of San Francisco, and filed a confidential draft S-1 with the SEC in June 2026.

The chart on this page depicts OpenAI Group PBC, the Delaware public benefit corporation that employs the staff and ships the products. It is not the OpenAI Foundation, the non-profit that sits above it. Since the recapitalization completed in October 2025 the Foundation has held special voting rights that let it appoint and replace every director of the PBC, while holding roughly 26% of its equity — less than Microsoft's approximately 27%, with the remaining share held by employees and other investors.

That deliberate gap between who owns the company and who controls it is what makes OpenAI's structure worth studying rather than simply reading off a leadership page. Above the board the arrangement is close to unique. Below it, the operating company is flatter and more conventional than its reputation suggests — and it has been rearranged three times in the last fifteen months.

OpenAI (OpenAI Group PBC) organizational chart

OpenAI (OpenAI Group PBC)'s reporting structure as of 2026-08. Drag to pan, scroll to zoom — or open it in QueryChart and edit it as your own.

A mission-holding non-profit on top, a flat functional company underneath

Below the CEO the operating company is functional rather than divisional. Research, applications, compute, finance, revenue, legal, compliance, global affairs and people report to Sam Altman as capabilities, not as businesses with their own profit and loss. There is no general manager of ChatGPT in the sense a consumer-software company would recognise, and no divisional balance sheet for anyone below the CEO to defend.

The number-two seat has been created and vacated twice in about fourteen months. Brad Lightcap's Chief Operating Officer remit was converted in April 2026 into a special-projects role covering complex deals, investments and forward-deployed enterprise engineers, still reporting to Altman. Fidji Simo's CEO of Applications role — created in May 2025 with the CFO and the CRO reporting into it — ended in July 2026, and her portfolio was reported as divided among the President, the CFO and the Chief Strategy Officer rather than handed to a successor. Neither seat has been refilled, so this chart has no single deputy at all.

Research is led by two peers rather than a chief and a deputy: Jakub Pachocki as Chief Scientist alongside Mark Chen as Chief Research Officer, whose remit explicitly includes arbitrating compute between product-immediate work and long-horizon frontier research. There has been no company-wide Chief Technology Officer since 2024. The title now exists only at divisional scope, as CTO of Applications, which means no single technical authority sits between the research organisation and the CEO.

The applications and infrastructure layer under the President is where the public record thins out, and this chart marks that honestly. Greg Brockman took over product oversight during and after Fidji Simo's absence; the placement of Vijaye Raji, Thibault Sottiaux, Nick Turley and Sachin Katti beneath him is an inference from that, not a line OpenAI has published. Compute and data-centre strategy was consolidated under Katti as a single VP in July 2026, after the previous Stargate infrastructure leadership left for Meta's compute unit.

Key leadership roles

1. Sam Altman

   Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder — Every function on this chart converges on him; there is currently no COO and no company-wide CTO between him and the organisation.

2. Greg Brockman

   President and Co-Founder — Absorbed part of the dissolved CEO of Applications portfolio in July 2026, which is why the applications and infrastructure leads are drawn beneath him.

3. Jakub Pachocki

   Chief Scientist — One of two peers leading research rather than a single research chief.

4. Mark Chen

   Chief Research Officer — Reported as reporting to the CEO; his remit includes allocating compute between frontier research and product work.

5. Sarah Friar

   Chief Financial Officer — Took on part of the applications portfolio in July 2026 alongside the confidential S-1 process.

6. Jason Kwon

   Chief Strategy Officer — Previously General Counsel; took the third share of the dissolved applications portfolio.

7. Brad Lightcap

   Lead, Special Projects (formerly Chief Operating Officer) — The only reporting line to the CEO that has been explicitly reported; covers complex deals, investments and forward-deployed enterprise engineers.

8. Denise Dresser

   Chief Revenue Officer — Reported to the CEO of Applications until that role was dissolved; her current line is genuinely unsettled and is drawn to the CEO here as an inference.

9. Chris Lehane

   Chief Global Affairs Officer — Runs policy and government affairs; the Chief Economist is placed under him by function, not by a stated line.

10. Vijaye Raji

    Chief Technology Officer, Applications — Joined through the acquisition of Statsig in September 2025; his placement under the President is inferred, not published.

11. Sachin Katti

    Vice President, Compute Strategy & GPT-Infra — Consolidated compute and data-centre strategy under one role in July 2026; his reporting line is inferred.

12. Arvind KC

    Chief People Officer — Appointed via OpenAI's own announcement post, one of the few leadership placements the company has stated directly.

How this structure supports the business

A flat functional company lets one person redirect research, compute and product at the pace the frontier actually moves. When the binding constraint changes — capital one quarter, GPUs the next, enterprise revenue the one after — there are no divisional profit-and-loss owners to negotiate with, and the frequent reorganisations are cheap precisely because nobody loses a business, only a reporting line.

Foundation control does the opposite job on a much longer clock. Directors of a public benefit corporation are obliged to weigh the stated mission alongside returns, and the Foundation can replace all of them if they stop doing so. That is what lets commitments on safety review, non-commercial research and deployment restraint outlive an investor base that now includes a shareholder holding more equity than the entity that appoints the board.

Separating an applications organisation with its own divisional CTO from the research organisation lets consumer and enterprise products ship on a product cadence while research keeps a research one. The compute allocation between them is not left to emerge from the schedule; it is written into the Chief Research Officer's job.

Advantages and disadvantages

Almost every function reporting to the CEO means research, compute and product can be redirected in weeks without inter-divisional negotiation.

It concentrates an extremely wide span of control and effectively all arbitration on one person, and the 2023 board crisis showed how little redundancy sits beneath him.

Foundation control insulates long-horizon mission decisions from quarterly investor pressure, and the PBC form legally obliges directors to weigh stakeholder interests rather than returns alone.

Ownership and control are deliberately misaligned — Microsoft holds more equity than the entity that appoints the board — which is a standing source of litigation, regulatory attention and IPO complexity.

A separate applications organisation with its own CTO lets products ship on product cadence instead of research cadence.

The seam between applications and research has twice been held together by a single senior integrator, and both times their departure left product oversight to be improvised across the President, the CFO and the Chief Strategy Officer.

Reshaping the C-suite repeatedly — special projects, a consolidated compute VP, a three-way split of the applications portfolio — keeps the chart matched to whichever constraint is currently binding.

Titles and reporting lines change faster than they are documented publicly, which makes accountability hard to read from outside and, ahead of an IPO, invites questions about bench depth and succession.

Interesting facts

• The OpenAI Foundation can appoint and replace every director of OpenAI Group PBC while holding roughly 26% of its equity, less than Microsoft's approximately 27%.
• Safety oversight is deliberately kept outside the commercial board: Zico Kolter chairs the Foundation's Safety and Security Committee but sits on the OpenAI Group PBC board only as a non-voting observer.
• OpenAI has had no company-wide Chief Technology Officer since 2024; the title survives only at divisional scope, so no single technical authority sits below the CEO.
• The number-two seat has been created and vacated twice in about fourteen months, and the second time it was split three ways rather than refilled.
• Senior roles arrive by acquisition roughly as often as by recruitment — the CTO of Applications came in through the Statsig acquisition in September 2025.
• Infrastructure leadership is a live competitive front rather than a stable function: the Stargate data-centre leadership left for Meta's compute unit in 2026 and the remit was consolidated under one VP in response.

Frequently asked questions

Is OpenAI a non-profit or a for-profit company?

Both, in a specific arrangement. The OpenAI Foundation is a non-profit and holds special voting rights over OpenAI Group PBC, a Delaware public benefit corporation that employs the staff and sells the products. Since the October 2025 recapitalization the Foundation holds roughly 26% of the PBC's equity, Microsoft about 27%, and employees and other investors the rest — but only the Foundation can appoint and replace the board.

Who reports directly to Sam Altman?

As of August 2026 the President, Chief Strategy Officer, the special-projects lead, the Chief Scientist and Chief Research Officer, the CFO, the Chief Revenue Officer, the General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, the Chief Global Affairs Officer and the Chief People Officer. Only Brad Lightcap's line has been explicitly reported; the rest are drawn from the functions those executives hold.

Why does OpenAI have no COO or company-wide CTO?

Both roles were eliminated rather than refilled. The COO remit was converted into a special-projects role in April 2026 with the commercial side absorbed by the Chief Revenue Officer, and there has been no company-wide CTO since Mira Murati left in 2024. The CTO title now exists only at divisional scope, covering the applications organisation.

How much of this OpenAI org chart is confirmed?

The top layer is well documented; the layer beneath it is not. OpenAI publishes no consolidated leadership page and announces appointments one post at a time, so titles below the top few are assembled from press reporting and secondary trackers. Reporting lines under the President are inferred from Greg Brockman taking over product oversight in mid-2026, and are labelled as such in the leadership notes.

Can I edit this OpenAI org chart?

Yes. Open it as your own chart and it becomes an ordinary QueryChart org chart — rename the roles, move people between the columns and seniority bands, and add or remove reports. It is a reasonable starting point for modelling a flat functional company or a mission-holding entity sitting above an operating one.

Use this org chart template

Open OpenAI's structure as an editable org chart and reshape it into your own — a useful starting point if you are modelling a flat functional company or a governance entity above an operating one.

Open this org chart as your own