It’s Greg Brockman’s OpenAI now

现在是格雷格·布罗克曼（Greg Brockman）的 OpenAI 时代

Sam Altman is still CEO, but in day-to-day operations, his second-in-command is running the show. 山姆·奥特曼（Sam Altman）依然担任首席执行官，但在日常运营中，他的二把手正在掌舵。

OpenAI has had a hell of a year. The company spent months battling former cofounder Elon Musk in a sensational jury trial, was hit with a high-profile trade secrets lawsuit from Apple, and faced widespread scrutiny after an unreleased model hacked another AI company. As it prepares for an IPO, a steady string of executives have departed, including some of the company’s biggest names. OpenAI 经历了一段极其动荡的时期。该公司花了数月时间与前联合创始人埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）进行了一场轰动一时的陪审团审判，遭遇了苹果公司备受瞩目的商业机密诉讼，并在其未发布的模型黑入另一家 AI 公司后面临广泛质疑。随着公司筹备首次公开募股（IPO），一批高管相继离职，其中包括公司内部的一些重量级人物。

Throughout it all, one person has quietly amassed power: Greg Brockman. 在这一切动荡之中，有一个人悄然积累了权力：格雷格·布罗克曼。

Brockman is currently OpenAI’s president and cofounder. He’s helped lead OpenAI since its inception, described as an “engineering workhorse that pushed to build scaled-up systems that would train the AI and make it work” during the company’s early days. He’s also been ambitious from the start, famously musing in a personal journal in 2017, “Financially what will take me to $1B?” (His current stake in OpenAI is worth nearly 30 times that.) But at that point he shared power with a handful of cofounders, like chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and CEO Altman. 布罗克曼目前是 OpenAI 的总裁兼联合创始人。自公司成立以来，他一直参与领导工作，在公司早期被描述为“推动构建大规模系统以训练 AI 并使其发挥作用的工程主力”。他从一开始就雄心勃勃，2017 年他在个人日记中写道：“从财务上讲，什么能让我达到 10 亿美元？”（他目前在 OpenAI 的持股价值几乎是这个数字的 30 倍。）但当时，他与首席科学家伊利亚·苏茨克维（Ilya Sutskever）和首席执行官奥特曼等少数几位联合创始人共同分享权力。

Now, though Brockman’s title hasn’t changed in years, his purview and job description have expanded significantly. He’s essentially now second-in-command at the company — and, when it comes to day-to-day operations, the big boss. 如今，尽管布罗克曼的头衔多年未变，但他的职权范围和工作职责已大幅扩展。他现在本质上是公司的二把手——而在日常运营方面，他就是最高决策者。

High-level figures have been leaving OpenAI all year, but April is when the departures really picked up. That month saw the exit of Bill Peebles, former head of Sora; Kevin Weil, VP of OpenAI’s science arm; and Srinivas Narayanan, CTO of B2B applications. Two others separately departed citing medical reasons: CMO Kate Rouch and Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of AGI deployment — who went on leave in April before officially stepping down in July. The changes have continued. Earlier this month, CRO Denise Dresser, who had taken on a slew of additional responsibilities after the April shake-ups, suddenly announced her departure after just eight months. Days later, Brad Lightcap — who had been in charge of “special projects” for a few months, but before that was OpenAI’s longtime COO — announced he would leave to start “something new.” 今年以来，OpenAI 的高层人物不断流失，但 4 月份离职潮真正加剧。那个月，Sora 前负责人比尔·皮布尔斯（Bill Peebles）、OpenAI 科学部门副总裁凯文·威尔（Kevin Weil）以及 B2B 应用首席技术官斯里尼瓦斯·纳拉亚南（Srinivas Narayanan）相继离职。另有两人因医疗原因离职：首席营销官凯特·劳奇（Kate Rouch）和 OpenAI AGI 部署首席执行官菲吉·西莫（Fidji Simo）——后者在 4 月休假，随后于 7 月正式卸任。变动仍在继续。本月早些时候，在 4 月人事调整后承担了大量额外职责的首席营收官丹妮丝·德雷瑟（Denise Dresser）在任职仅八个月后突然宣布离职。几天后，负责“特殊项目”几个月、此前长期担任 OpenAI 首席运营官的布拉德·莱特卡普（Brad Lightcap）也宣布离职，去开启“新的事业”。

Several of these departures — like those of Rouch, Peebles, and Weil — didn’t seem to directly affect Brockman’s position. But others expanded his authority. When Simo went on medical leave, Brockman took charge of all things product, including leading OpenAI’s super app efforts. 其中一些离职（如 Rouch、Peebles 和 Weil）似乎并未直接影响布罗克曼的职位。但其他变动扩大了他的权力。当西莫休病假时，布罗克曼接管了所有产品事务，包括领导 OpenAI 的超级应用开发工作。

That role took on even greater significance the following month, after OpenAI underwent yet another executive reorganization to focus on growing revenue. The change put Brockman not only in charge of product strategy, but also the company’s entire “scaling” arm, giving him authority over virtually every part of its commercial operation. Simo’s official departure, just weeks after OpenAI officially filed to IPO, solidified that arrangement. Notably, when Dresser departed last week, a quote from Brockman — rather than CEO Sam Altman — was included in the press release about the changes; he wrote that the company would “build out the full system to make AI broadly useful for people and businesses.” 次月，在 OpenAI 为了专注于营收增长而进行又一次高管重组后，这一角色的重要性进一步凸显。这次调整不仅让布罗克曼负责产品战略，还让他掌管了公司整个“规模化”部门，使他拥有了对公司几乎所有商业运营环节的决策权。在 OpenAI 正式提交 IPO 申请几周后，西莫的正式离职巩固了这一安排。值得注意的是，上周德雷瑟离职时，关于人事变动的新闻稿中引用的是布罗克曼的话，而不是首席执行官山姆·奥特曼的话；他写道，公司将“构建完整的系统，使 AI 能广泛服务于个人和企业”。

To outside observers, the changes demonstrate OpenAI’s growing focus on chasing revenue as its IPO approaches, as well as fostering products that will differentiate it from rival Anthropic. Big shifts in executives’ scope of work tend to be a “signal towards where the company is headed strategically,” Harrison Rolfes, a senior research analyst at PitchBook, told The Verge. “When you have someone like Greg Brockman, for example, he’s more of a product scale and commercial sort of guy. He has a deep technical knowledge that essentially will collapse certain decision-making layers.” 对于外部观察者来说，这些变化表明随着 IPO 的临近，OpenAI 越来越专注于追求营收，并致力于开发能使其与竞争对手 Anthropic 区分开来的产品。PitchBook 的高级研究分析师哈里森·罗尔夫斯（Harrison Rolfes）告诉《The Verge》：“高管工作范围的重大调整往往是公司战略走向的信号。以格雷格·布罗克曼为例，他更偏向于产品规模化和商业化。他拥有深厚的技术知识，这本质上会精简某些决策层级。”

It also may naturally translate to some departures among lower-level employees, said Rolfes: “Whatever he says goes [now] … If, let’s say, you’re below Brockman and you don’t agree with his approach but you’re a lead researcher, whatever it may be, you’re not going to work there anymore — you’re going to say, ‘I’m going to leave.’” 罗尔夫斯表示，这也可能自然而然地导致一些基层员工离职：“（现在）他说什么就是什么……假设你是布罗克曼的下属，如果你不同意他的方法，无论你是首席研究员还是其他什么职位，你都不会再在那里工作了——你会说，‘我要辞职。’”

Brockman’s authority is exceeded only by Altman — who undertook a deliberate consolidation of power after clashing with OpenAI’s board in 2023. The two didn’t always agree in OpenAI’s early days: Brockman sometimes sided with Sutskever in difficult decisions about power dynamics, questioning some of Altman’s ambitions, although he also worried about Musk “steamrolling” Altman. But he’s generally stayed close to Altman personally and professionally. When Altman was ousted from his CEO role in November 2023, Brockman immediately resigned in solidarity and began making plans for a new AI endeavor with him. Since then, the two have only seemed to become more aligned. 布罗克曼的权力仅次于奥特曼——奥特曼在 2023 年与 OpenAI 董事会发生冲突后，刻意巩固了自己的权力。在 OpenAI 早期，两人并不总是意见一致：布罗克曼有时会在关于权力动态的艰难决策中站在苏茨克维一边，质疑奥特曼的一些野心，尽管他也担心马斯克会“压制”奥特曼。但总的来说，他在个人和职业层面上一直与奥特曼保持密切关系。2023 年 11 月奥特曼被免去首席执行官职务时，布罗克曼立即辞职以示声援，并开始与他共同筹划新的 AI 项目。从那时起，两人的步调似乎更加一致了。

Any centralization of power has practical benefits for OpenAI, allowing it to cut some of its most expensive salary payouts to help its balance sheet, says Ross Carmel, a partner at Sichenzia Ross Ference Carmel (SRFC). “When you’re going into an IPO, particularly for a company like OpenAI, who is lagging behind Anthropic in terms of revenue, you want to decrease those expenses so that this way, you’re either more profitable or closer to profitable,” he said. Sichenzia Ross Ference Carmel (SRFC) 的合伙人罗斯·卡梅尔（Ross Carmel）表示，任何权力的集中对 OpenAI 都有实际好处，使其能够削减一些最高昂的薪酬支出，从而改善资产负债表。“当你准备 IPO 时，特别是对于像 OpenAI 这样在营收方面落后于 Anthropic 的公司，你希望减少这些开支，这样你就能实现更高的盈利，或者更接近盈利，”他说。