OpenAI is losing three senior leaders as the company shifts focus toward enterprise products amid a reported “code red” situation due to competition from Google and other AI rivals.
Kevin Weil, who was chief product officer before leading OpenAI’s science research initiative, and Bill Peebles, a key researcher who led development of the company’s video-generation model Sora, are leaving. OpenAI is also losing Srinivas Narayanan, its enterprise applications CTO who plans to spend time with his parents in India before deciding what to do next, according to a post on X.
“Today is my last day at OpenAI, as OpenAI for Science is being decentralized into other research teams,” Weil posted on X. “Accelerating science will be one of the most stunningly positive outcomes of our push to AGI.”
Weil oversaw OpenAI for Science, an internal group focused on accelerating research through AI. The unit, which developed a platform called Prism, is being folded into other teams. Weil’s departure comes a day after his team introduced GPT-Rosalind, a model aimed at life sciences and drug discovery.
Peebles, also on X, wrote that “building Sora zero-to-one with you all has been the honor and adventure of a lifetime.”
Sora — once positioned as a flagship generative video system — was shut down last month after racking up an estimated $1 million in daily compute costs, according to media reports.
The leadership changes underscore a broader shift inside OpenAI as it reallocates resources away from high-cost research bets toward commercial AI products with clearer paths to revenue.