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OpenAI has hired Mike Liberatore, former finance chief at Elon Musk’s xAI, to be the artificial intelligence startup’s business finance officer, responsible for overseeing its massive infrastructure spending.
Liberatore, who left xAI in July after just three months on the job, begins Tuesday, a company spokesperson told CNBC. He will report to CFO Sarah Friar and work with Greg Brockman’s team, which manages the contracts and capital behind OpenAI’s compute strategy.
The hiring of Liberatore is the latest move in an escalating feud between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Musk, who used to be good friends but have turned into bitter rivals. The pair helped co-found OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab, but had a public falling out in recent years as the company morphed into a rapid-growing commercial enterprise, financed principally by Microsoft.
Musk sued Altman and OpenAI last year for breach of contract and has since tried to thwart the company’s effort to restructure into a for-profit entity. OpenAI took a significant step towards that transition last week, announcing that its nonprofit parent will continue to have oversight over the company and will own an equity stake of more than $100 billion.
OpenAI, which was recently valued by investors at $500 billion, has been steadily increasing its compute commitments, including a $300 billion deal with Oracle.
Liberatore previously spent almost nine years at Airbnb, and before that worked in senior finance roles at SquareTrade, eBay and PayPal.
At xAI, Liberatore helped arrange a $5 billion debt sale alongside a $5 billion equity raise backed partly by SpaceX, and approved major data center expansion plans. His exit, which was was first reported by The Wall Street Journal earlier this month, was part of a string of high-profile departures at Musk’s AI startup.
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