OpenAI Executives Resign Amid Strategic Pivot to Enterprise AI

Three senior leaders at OpenAI resigned on April 17, 2026, signaling a strategic shift away from high-cost, research-heavy initiatives. Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil, Sora lead Bill Peebles, and B2B Applications CTO Srinivas Narayanan departed as the company reorganizes to improve margins and compete for business customers.

The company is discontinuing support for the Sora AI video generator, which reportedly cost $1 million per day to operate, and shutting down the OpenAI for Science division. Weil's former team is being decentralized into other research units, and the Prism tool for scientists will be integrated into the Codex team. These moves align with a broader effort by executive Fidji Simo to unify business and product strategies ahead of a potential initial public offering.

Narayanan, who oversaw the scaling of ChatGPT and the developer API platform, stated that upcoming product launches made it the right time to step back so he could spend time with his parents in India. These exits follow a period of instability, including the earlier departures of co-founder Ilya Sutskever and former CTO Mira Murati, and the transition of COO Brad Lightcap to a special projects role. Other leadership gaps emerged as Fidji Simo and CMO Kate Rouch took medical leave, while hardware lead Caitlin Kalinowski resigned following the company's acceptance of a Pentagon contract.