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OpenAI has employed Mike Liberatore, former finance chief at Elon Musk’s xAI, to be the synthetic intelligence startup’s enterprise finance officer, liable for overseeing its huge infrastructure spending.
Liberatore, who left xAI in July after simply three months on the job, begins Tuesday, an organization spokesperson instructed CNBC. He’ll report back to CFO Sarah Friar and work with Greg Brockman’s staff, which manages the contracts and capital behind OpenAI’s compute technique.
The hiring of Liberatore is the newest transfer in an escalating feud between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Musk, who was good buddies however have become bitter rivals. The pair helped co-found OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit analysis lab, however had a public falling out lately as the corporate morphed right into a rapid-growing business enterprise, financed principally by Microsoft.
Musk sued Altman and OpenAI final 12 months for breach of contract and has since tried to thwart the corporate’s effort to restructure right into a for-profit entity. OpenAI took a major step in direction of that transition final week, saying that its nonprofit guardian will proceed to have oversight over the corporate and can personal an fairness stake of greater than $100 billion.
OpenAI, which was lately valued by buyers at $500 billion, has been steadily growing its compute commitments, together with a $300 billion deal with Oracle.
Liberatore beforehand spent virtually 9 years at Airbnb, and earlier than that labored in senior finance roles at SquareTrade, eBay and PayPal.
At xAI, Liberatore helped organize a $5 billion debt sale alongside a $5 billion fairness increase backed partly by SpaceX, and accepted main knowledge middle enlargement plans. His exit, which was was first reported by The Wall Road Journal earlier this month, was a part of a string of high-profile departures at Musk’s AI startup.