OpenAI Data Centre Chief Exit Adds Leadership Risk to $600 Billion Compute Plan
CNBC confirmed that OpenAI data centre chief Chris Malone has left, putting another leadership change beside the company’s roughly $600 billion compute-spending target and 2027 public-company plan.
OpenAI's data centre leadership has changed again after Chris Malone, the executive overseeing part of the company's infrastructure expansion, left the company, CNBC confirmed, adding management turnover to an AI buildout that already carries one of the sector's largest compute spending targets.
Malone joined OpenAI in March 2025 after infrastructure engineering roles at Meta and Google.
His remit sat inside a plan that includes a target of roughly $600 billion in compute spending by 2030, linking the personnel change to the company's broader effort to secure the data centre capacity needed for frontier model development.
OpenAI framed the departure around an internal infrastructure reorganization.
A company spokesperson said the group had been adjusted to support the scale and pace of its work and that a data centre team with defined leadership remained in place.
The change lands as U.S. data centre expansion faces more political scrutiny.
CNBC cited a National Republican Senatorial Committee memo warning that data centres had become a potential midterm-election issue, a sign that power, land and local approval questions are moving alongside the industry's technical capacity race.
Malone is not the only senior departure.
Revenue chief Denise Dresser recently announced her exit after less than a year in the role, while Brad Lightcap ended an eight-year run at the company.
Fidji Simo, previously OpenAI's product and business chief, also said last month that she would step away to manage a chronic illness, and four other executives left in April.
The executive churn comes as OpenAI tries to support an $852 billion valuation and prepare for a public-market debut.
The company confidentially filed a prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June, and CFO Sarah Friar told employees this month that OpenAI would be a public company in 2027.
President Greg Brockman pushed back on the idea that the exits point to an unusual breakdown, telling CNBC that OpenAI's visibility makes each departure more scrutinized than it would be at a less prominent company.
The infrastructure test remains more concrete: OpenAI still has to turn leadership changes, financing plans and site development into enough compute capacity for its model roadmap.
