Brad Lightcap, chief operating officer at OpenAI, has announced he will leave the firm in the coming weeks.

Lightcap has worked at OpenAI for eight years, having worked for four years as chief financial officer prior to taking on the role of chief operating officer ahead of the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.

In April, OpenAI announced that Lightcap would hand over the majority of his responsibilities to Denise Dresser, chief revenue officer at OpenAI and former chief executive of Slack, to focus on “special projects”.

This was understood to include the OpenAI Deployment Company, a forward-deployed engineering venture backed by 19 global investment firms such as BBVA, Goldman Sachs, and Softbank Corp.

In a post on X, Lightcap said it is “bittersweet” to leave the firm and that “mission success seems in sight”, without specifying the exact reasons for his resignation.

“Over the last few months, I’ve been focused on the next horizon and what would stand in the way of mission success,” he said. “I believe there are a few important new things the world will need to get right as we enter this next period. I’ll have more to share soon, but I believe in OpenAI more than ever and am excited to help you all advance the mission from a different vantage point.”

Lightcap’s departure marks the 12th such exit by a senior OpenAI figure since January 2026, including the firm’s chief technology officer of B2B applications, chief communications officer, chief marketing officer, head of safety, AI ethics lead, head of robotics, and head of science.

The frontier AI developer continues to target profits from its AI models ahead of its initial public offering, which could see it debut at over $1 trillion in value. In June, the Financial Times reported that OpenAI took $13 billion in revenue throughout 2025 but spent $34 billion.

In a blog post, author and critic Ed Zitron noted that OpenAI’s net losses for the year hit $38.53 billion and that this was “deeply concerning” for the company’s financial standing.

“Losses also appear to be mounting year-over-year at a dramatic rate, and I’m not sure how this company finds a way toward any kind of sustainability or profitability,” he said.

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