Synopsis
Srinivas Narayanan, chief technology officer of business-to-business (B2B) applications at American AI company OpenAI, announced on Saturday that he will be leaving the company at the end of next week, marking the close of a three-year stint during a period of high-profile product launches.Listen to this article in summarized format
In simultaneous posts shared on microblogging site X (formerly Twitter) and professional networking platform LinkedIn, Narayanan said the decision followed recent and upcoming product rollouts, describing it as “the right time to step back.” He led OpenAI’s B2B engineering team and previously headed the Applied Engineering group.
During his tenure, OpenAI launched widely adopted products such as ChatGPT and its API platform, which Narayanan described as among “the fastest-growing products in history,” built without an established playbook.
Narayanan said he plans to spend time in India with his aging parents before deciding on his next steps. His departure comes at a time when OpenAI continues to expand its enterprise and developer-focused offerings globally.
Earlier in the day, Bill Peebles, who led OpenAI’s defunct short-form video app Sora, and Kevin Weil, the vice president of OpenAI for Science, shared the news about their exits in separate posts on X.
The departures come just weeks after Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s product and business chief, announced she would take a medical leave because of a worsening neuroimmune condition. Kate Rouch, OpenAI’s marketing chief, also decided to step down to focus on her cancer recovery earlier this month, and Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s operating chief, transitioned to a new role focused on “special projects.”
India is OpenAI's second largest market in terms of users, fastest growing and among the top five in terms of enterprise usage, and the company is now building products in the country, which can be scaled up globally, Narayanan had told ET in an interview in November last year.
Answering questions on RoI on AI investments and worry of a bubble building up, Narayanan had said, "We are in the very early stages of probably the most important technological revolution of our lifetimes, I think talks of ROI and bubble are just too early. What I would say is that just look at the last few years and how much AI has delivered value, how fast these products have grown. Everything is unprecedented. And so that shows you the promise," Narayanan had said.
On competition with Anthropic, which is growing its enterprise play, he had said that competition is going to be there and shows the scope for what is possible.
On the threat to India's software services industry with platforms like Codex he had said that engineers will have to think like founders and CEOs, and strategise and let platforms take care of the operational tasks. He had also spoken about the AI talent wars in the Valley and the company's data centre investments in India.
