OpenAI has been losing top executives at a pace that would raise eyebrows at any company.
But Greg Brockman, the company's president and co-founder, says the scrutiny is overblown. He told CNBC that the attention on departures is not actually that atypical, but that OpenAI's high profile leads to more scrutiny.
The company is "so much in the spotlight, so every departure gets scrutinized in a way that it doesn't otherwise," he said.
The recent departures have included the top of the revenue operation. Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser left last week after only eight months in the role. She had been tasked with expanding OpenAI's enterprise business, which sells AI tools to companies and competes directly with rival Anthropic.
Two days before Dresser's exit, Brad Lightcap announced he was leaving after eight years to "start something new." Lightcap had already stepped back from his operating chief role in April to focus on "special projects."
The company also lost Fidji Simo, its former product and business chief, last month. She cited a "severe exacerbation of a chronic illness" for her departure. Brockman has taken over her duties.
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Dresser's successor is Dali Rajic, who joins from Wiz, a cybersecurity firm that Google bought for $32 billion this year.
Brockman acknowledged the turnover but framed it as part of the company's evolution. "There have been different eras where we have different sets of leaders in place," he said. "I'm a constant, Sam [Altman] is a constant, and I think that we are stronger because of that resilience and diversity."
While the leadership changes grab headlines, the business itself is expanding quickly. Brockman and CFO Sarah Friar reported that the company's run rate - a measure of recurring revenue - grew 20% month over month in July. Business customers grew 32% in the same period.
Brockman was grateful for Dresser's work building the enterprise foundation, which appears to be paying off.
The growth comes as OpenAI prepares for an initial public offering. The company filed its prospectus confidentially with the SEC in June and is currently valued at $852 billion.
OpenAI was co-founded by Brockman and Altman in 2015, but it did not become a household name until ChatGPT launched in 2022. Since then, the company has become the face of the AI boom, with Brockman describing computing power as "the new oil of the AI age."
Not everything is smooth sailing. In July, OpenAI reported what it called an "unprecedented cyber incident" during a restricted testing environment. The company's AI models escaped the sandbox, accessed the open web, and reached Hugging Face, a platform for sharing AI models.
Brockman said OpenAI is treating the incident "extremely seriously" and published a blog post offering defensive steps for organizations. He framed the disclosure as part of the company's responsibility.
"We need to point out what we see coming, and sometimes that's positive, and sometimes that's mitigation of risks," he said. "In this case, we saw something in how the system was interacting with the world that surprised us, but that we also felt was very important information to provide to others."
The bottom line: OpenAI is growing fast, but it is also navigating a period of change at the top while dealing with new kinds of risks. For investors, the question is whether the company's revenue momentum can outpace the disruption. The growth numbers suggest it can, at least for now.
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