Chris Malone, OpenAI’s head of data centers, left the artificial intelligence company last week, marking another senior departure as the ChatGPT maker prepares for a planned 2027 listing, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Malone’s exit makes him the fourth prominent executive to depart recently, following Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser, Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap and Fidji Simo, who served as a key deputy to CEO Sam Altman. The leadership turnover has drawn attention as OpenAI accelerates its massive AI infrastructure expansion.
Oracle, a major partner in OpenAI’s Stargate data-center initiative, saw its shares edge lower on Tuesday following the report. The Stargate partnership with Oracle and SoftBank is central to OpenAI’s strategy for securing the computing capacity needed to develop increasingly powerful AI models.
Malone joined OpenAI in March 2025, shortly after Stargate was announced. He previously held senior data-center and engineering positions at Meta and Google. Earlier in 2026, OpenAI reorganized its infrastructure operations, placing VP Sachin Katti in charge of the broader infrastructure group under President Greg Brockman. Malone and Adrian Caulfield subsequently became co-heads of a data-center technical engineering team.
The company has continued reshaping its infrastructure leadership. OpenAI promoted Uday Ruddarraju to chief technology officer of computing capacity in July, while former xAI executive Brent Mayo is responsible for helping keep computing projects on schedule. Both previously worked on Elon Musk’s Colossus supercomputer project in Memphis.
OpenAI’s infrastructure spending plans have expanded alongside its AI ambitions. The company now expects to spend about $750 billion on computing power through 2030, compared with an earlier projection of roughly $600 billion, the WSJ reported.
OpenAI also recently agreed to a 10-gigawatt data-center lease in Ohio with SoftBank’s SB Energy. Nvidia is providing a guarantee of up to $105 billion supporting the project, according to Reuters. The first phase of the Ohio data-center campus is expected to begin operations in 2028.


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