The ChatGPT maker has put two banking chiefs on both its nonprofit and for-profit boards: Nubank’s David Vélez and BNY’s Robin Vince. It is the kind of Wall Street ballast a company assembles when it is getting ready to face public investors.
OpenAI is not a public company yet. Its latest board picks suggest it is preparing to become one. It has appointed two veteran banking chiefs to its boards. That is the clearest governance signal so far that a stock market debut is on the horizon.
The company said on Tuesday that both executives will join two boards at once. Vélez founded and runs the Latin American digital bank Nubank. Vince is chairman and chief executive of BNY, a custody bank more than 240 years old. Both will sit on the OpenAI Foundation, its nonprofit parent, and on OpenAI Group PBC, its for-profit arm.
“David and Robin are exceptional leaders who have used technology to reshape financial services and expand opportunity at global scale,” said Bret Taylor, who chairs both boards. He added that their experience would matter “as OpenAI serves more businesses and people around the world.”
A board built for Wall Street #
The timing is the story. OpenAI is weighing an initial public offering as soon as 2027, according to Bloomberg. That listing could arrive after rival Anthropic’s own debut. The Wall Street Journal framed the pair as independent directors, the kind of outside oversight public investors expect.
Both men know the terrain. Vince spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs, rising to chief risk officer and treasurer, before taking over BNY in 2022. Vélez, a former Sequoia partner, built Nubank into one of the world’s largest digital banks. It now serves more than 135 million customers, and recently won conditional approval to open a US national bank.
The governance question #
For OpenAI, seasoned finance directors do more than polish the prospectus. This is the same board that fired and rehired Sam Altman in a chaotic week in 2023. That episode spooked investors and staff alike. Recruiting executives who have steered large institutions through crises should answer lingering doubts about who is minding the shop. The company has been adding senior hires across policy and research as the float nears. The dual appointment also underlines OpenAI’s unusual shape. The company still sits under a nonprofit foundation. Meanwhile its for-profit arm raises tens of billions and eyes public markets. Placing the same two directors on both boards ties the mission to the money, at least on paper.
The fintech angle #
There is a commercial logic too. Nubank and BNY are exactly the sort of customers OpenAI wants. Banks are pouring money into AI, and Vince has made data and AI central to his overhaul of BNY. Vélez, meanwhile, has built the kind of digital bank that established rivals now study closely.
None of this makes a float certain. OpenAI has stressed that it has fixed no timeline. The road to a listing still runs through hard questions about its finances and its structure. But a company assembles a board with a destination in mind. This one increasingly looks pointed at the New York Stock Exchange.
Get the TNW newsletter #
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.