Breaking: OpenAI's "No. 1 business employee" has left the company and is expected to start his own business.

Another senior veteran executive at OpenAI is about to leave.

Zhidx reported on August 12 that earlier this morning, Brad Lightcap, former COO of OpenAI and the company's "first business employee", announced his departure on social platform X.

Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, commented: "Thank you for everything you have done! ... We could not have come this far without you. I am looking forward to continuing our cooperation in the future."

In his post on X, he said he is going to "start something new", which may imply that he will start his own business.

According to foreign media CNBC, Lightcap has been one of Sam Altman's closest confidants since the early days of OpenAI's founding, and the two once worked together at startup incubator Y Combinator.

In 2018, Sam Altman needed someone to manage finances. At that time, OpenAI was still a non-profit research institution with only 40 employees, no products and no clear revenue model, but someone had to take charge of the funds.

Altman found Brad Lightcap, who he had worked with at startup accelerator Y Combinator, and asked him to help find a suitable candidate. Lightcap interviewed more than 20 people, but no one was willing to take the job. So Brad Lightcap decided to take the position himself, and temporarily served as OpenAI's first business-focused employee.

Lightcap joined OpenAI in 2018 as CFO (Chief Financial Officer). In 2022, he took up the position of COO (Chief Operating Officer).

In a previous interview with CNBC, Lightcap mentioned that in 2023, with the release of GPT-4 and the launch of ChatGPT Enterprise, OpenAI's customers "poured in from all directions".

By the middle of 2025, Lightcap had expanded OpenAI's market expansion team from about 50 people to more than 700 people, including sales representatives and employees focusing on customer success, developer relations and strategic cooperation.

Until April this year, Lightcap was transferred to a new position focusing on "special projects". OpenAI said at the time that Denise Dresser, OpenAI's Chief Revenue Officer, would take over most of Brad Lightcap's responsibilities.

This year, OpenAI has seen frequent executive turmoil.

Last month, Fidji Simo, the "second-in-command" at OpenAI who once served as the head of product and business of OpenAI, had to resign from her full-time position at OpenAI due to an acute attack of her chronic disease, and became a part-time consultant for OpenAI. (Breaking news: OpenAI's "second-in-command" has left the company)

In April, three OpenAI executives announced their departures: Bill Peebles, head of Sora, Kevin Weil, Vice President of Science at OpenAI, and Srinivas Narayanan, Chief Technology Officer of B2B Applications.

Katie Miller, a well-known YouTuber and podcaster, summarized the main leadership positions that have left OpenAI since January this year, including:

This series of personnel changes coincides with OpenAI's preparation for listing. In June this year, OpenAI secretly submitted its application for initial public offering (IPO). In the announcement, OpenAI said that the listing time has not been determined yet. But according to a report by The Information in June, Sam Altman revealed in an internal letter that OpenAI plans to complete the IPO within one year.

Anthropic, OpenAI's main competitor, also announced on June 1 that it has secretly submitted the draft S-1 registration statement to the SEC to prepare for the initial public offering of common stock.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Zhidx" (ID: zhidcom), author: Wang Han, editor: Xin Yuan, published with authorization by 36Kr.