Chris Malone has left OpenAI after a year and a half as its head of data centers.

He is one of a number of executives to have left the company in recent months, while the business's data center team has also experienced multiple changes. The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the departure.

Malone joined from Meta, where he spent nearly five years as a distinguished engineer. Prior to that, he spent nearly 12 years at Google, focused on the company's data center infrastructure and IT hardware R&D.

At OpenAI, he worked alongside head of infrastructure and Meta alum Keith Heyde, until his departure earlier this year. Peter Hoeschele, who ran the Stargate joint venture, also left around that time, bringing several AI infrastructure senior leaders with him.

In March, OpenAI divided its compute and infrastructure teams into three groups: those designing the data centers, those working on commercial partnerships with cloud providers and chip companies, and those managing the data centers OpenAI is using.

Intel's Sachin Katti was brought in to manage everything related to Stargate, a role he maintains. Former Apple director of data center engineering Spas Lazarov, who joined OpenAI in 2025, was named head of data center engineering in January. Uday Ruddarraju, previously of xAI, was promoted to CTO of compute in July. Fellow former xAI member Brent Mayo, has been named head of data center build and delivery.

Beyond Stargate, OpenAI has seen a number of high-profile departures, including chief revenue officer Denise Dresser, chief operating officer Brad Lightcap, and Sam Altman's second-in-command Fidji Simo.

The company is preparing to go public next year, but last month raised its projected spending on compute to around $750 billion through 2030.