Former xAI CFO Named OpenAI’s New Business Finance Officer

OpenAI has hired Mike Liberatore, the former chief financial officer at Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, CNBC reported on September 16. 

Liberatore’s LinkedIn profile lists his current role as the business finance officer at OpenAI. His tenure at xAI lasted merely four months, and previously, he worked as the vice president of finance and corporate development at Airbnb. 

The report added that Liberatore will report to OpenAI’s current CFO, Sarah Friar, and will work with co-founder Greg Brockman’s team, which manages the contracts and capital behind the company’s compute strategy. 

According to The Wall Street Journal’s report, Liberatore was involved with xAI’s funding efforts, including a $5 billion debt sale in June. He also oversaw xAI’s data centre expansion in Memphis, Tennessee, in the United States. The reasons for his departure remain unknown. 

Liberatore is an addition to the list of recent high-profile departures from xAI. Last month, Robert Keele, who was the general counsel at the company, announced his departure, stating that there were differences between his worldviews and Musk’s. 

The WSJ report also added that Raghu Rao, a senior lawyer overseeing the commercial and legal affairs for the company, left around the same time. 

Furthermore, Igor Babuschkin, the co-founder of the company, also announced last month that he was leaving xAI to start his own venture capital firm. 

That being said, Liberatore's appointment at OpenAI comes at a time when the company has announced significant structural changes. 

OpenAI recently announced that its nonprofit division will now be ‘paired’ with a stake in its public benefit corporation (PBC), valued at over $100 billion. The company also announced it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Microsoft to transform its for-profit arm into a PBC. This structural change was initially announced by OpenAI in May.