OpenAI Poaches Ex-xAI CFO as Finance Arms Race Heats Up
OpenAI has hired Mike Liberatore, the previous finance chief at Elon Musk’s xAI, to serve as its new enterprise finance officer. His job? Keeping tabs on the corporate’s ballooning AI infrastructure prices and ensuring the compute faucets don’t run dry.
Liberatore will report on to CFO Sarah Friar and work alongside Greg Brockman’s staff as OpenAI doubles down on scaling its sources.
Now, if the identify sounds acquainted, it ought to—Liberatore had solely not too long ago left xAI after a brief stint however not earlier than steering an enormous $5 billion debt increase and an identical fairness funding.
It’s a résumé transfer that indicators OpenAI isn’t just chasing AI brains, but in addition searching the monetary heavyweights who know how one can preserve the lights on within the age of multimillion-dollar GPU clusters.
What makes this juicier is the backstory. Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI, has spent a lot of the previous yr embroiled in authorized clashes with the corporate.
His lawsuits accused OpenAI of drifting from its mission, whereas OpenAI fired again with countersuits, claiming harassment. Against that backdrop, bringing in a former Musk lieutenant appears much less like coincidence and extra like a press release.
And let’s not ignore the broader stage. The race to dominate AI is bleeding into finance, with titans like Goldman Sachs deploying generative AI assistants throughout tens of hundreds of employees to shave off prices and velocity up decision-making.
At the identical time, regulators from California to India are warning that AI’s monetary footprint—whether or not in compliance, lending, or infrastructure funding—wants contemporary guardrails earlier than it spirals.
Here’s my take: OpenAI’s transfer isn’t just about one government. It’s about sending a message to rivals, buyers, and even regulators:
“We’re able to handle this just like the trillion-dollar business it’s turning into.” Whether that confidence pays off or turns into hubris is a narrative nonetheless ready to be written.