# OpenAI COO Resigns > Source: > Published: 2026-08-11 20:42:30+00:00 i shared the message below with the openai team this morning. these decisions are never easy, but the talent and mission orientation of the openai team make me more optimistic than ever. 🤍 ### Team, it is bittersweet to share that I’ll be moving on from OpenAI to start something new. I feel incredibly fortunate to have spent most of the last decade pursuing our mission and building this company. Sitting here today, mission success feels within sight. It has been the honor of my life to help bring us to this point, and to do it alongside all of you. I joined OpenAI in 2018, eight years ago this month, because I wanted to work on something hard. [@sama](/sama)introduced me to[@gdb](/gdb)and[@ilyasut](/ilyasut), who showed me a pitch deck suggesting that because models improve predictably with scale, AGI was not only possible but likely. If you had told me then that we’d be where we are today, I wouldn't have believed you. In the years that followed, I had the privilege of building the first versions of most of our operations and business teams – from Finance to Legal, People, CorpSec, GTM/Gov, Partnerships, and more. Among the most rewarding parts of this journey for me has been watching each of these teams mature under brilliant leaders. I am excited for the next decade in the hands of this incredibly capable team. At the same time, we grew from a small research lab to one of the most consequential companies of our time. I was reminded of that fact constantly – from serving our first user to our billionth, to the growing scale and ambition of our partnerships and the occasional curveball (the Blip, etc.). Through it all, I’m proud of how we’ve maintained our focus on people. It always amazes me how quickly the world has adopted our tools and rallied behind our mission. I hope we will continue to earn their trust. Over the last few months, I’ve been focused on the next horizon and what would stand in the way of mission success. I believe there are a few important new things the world will need to get right as we enter this next period. I’ll have more to share soon, but I believe in OpenAI more than ever and am excited to help you all advance the mission from a different vantage point. I am deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to work with all of you, and to so many of you for the support through the years. The old OpenAI meme that “the real AGI is the friends you made along the way” really rings true for me. I will be around for the next few weeks. I am not going far and hope to continue to support you all however I can. I’ll always be a phone call away if you need me. BradAug 11, 2026 · 4:16 PM UTC 199 72 2,131 646,281