According to multiple people familiar with the matter, three executives who participated in the launch of OpenAI’s first “Stargate” data center project have resigned or will leave the ChatGPT development company in the near future. One of the people familiar with the matter said that Peter Hirschler, an OpenAI executive who played a key role in launching the Stargate project, has resigned. Two other people said that Shamez Hemani, who is responsible for computing strategy and business development, and Anuj Saharan, another head of OpenAI’s computing department, have announced their resignations to colleagues.
According to a person familiar with the matter, the departing executives will join the same new company, but the name of the company has not yet been determined.
The infrastructure team has always been a core challenge facing OpenAI and its competitors: how to obtain sufficient computing power at an affordable cost to meet the surging demand for AI products. OpenAI stated that it plans to obtain computing power with a total value of more than 600 billion US dollars in the next five years. To this end, it has reached cooperation agreements with a number of chip and cloud computing giants such as Oracle and Amazon Cloud Technology.
The changes follow a massive reorganization of OpenAI’s infrastructure division. At the end of last year, the company hired former Intel executive Sachin Karti as head of computing power and infrastructure.
An OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement: "We thank Peter, Shameez and Anuj for their contributions to OpenAI and wish them all the best in the future. The company recently hired Sachin Karti to lead the industrial computing department, and the team is making steady progress in the process of building the required infrastructure for the next generation of AI systems at scale."
Last year, the team signed an agreement to build 8 gigawatts of computing power in the next few years, down from the 10 gigawatt target set when the $500 billion Stargate project was announced in January 2025. Even so, the scale is still huge. As of the end of last year, OpenAI had about 2 gigawatts of available computing power, equivalent to the power generation of two nuclear power plants.
Saharan announced his departure on OpenAI's Slack on Thursday, saying, "It has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience to work with you all over and over again to build what may be the world's largest computer."
Founding core member of "Stargate Project"
Heschler, Hermani and Saharan are all members of the founding team of the "Stargate Project". The project is OpenAI’s ambitious plan to autonomously build and operate large-scale data centers. The plan, announced at a public event at the White House shortly after President Trump's inauguration, is the centerpiece of OpenAI's early efforts to gain long-term control over the infrastructure needed to train and run advanced AI models.
But last year, OpenAI finally gave up its self-construction route due to financing difficulties and difficulty in finalizing the proposed joint venture structure with SoftBank and Oracle. The company has instead relied more on cooperation, leasing large amounts of computing power to cloud service providers and infrastructure providers, rather than directly holding assets.
After Katy joined, many executives, including Hirschler, who had previously reported directly to OpenAI president and co-founder Gregg Brockman, were placed under Katy's management (Katy reported to Brockman). Hirschler then took charge of an internal team called the "Ecology and Cooperation Department for Industrial Computing (EPIC)".
According to people familiar with the matter, OpenAI has no plans to find a successor for Hirschler’s position.
Insinuations against rival Anthropic
Although OpenAI adjusted its "Stargate" strategy last year, the company believes that its aggressive investment strategy has given it an advantage over the competition. In a recent internal memo to investors, OpenAI mocked rival Anthropic, saying its “development curve is significantly smaller” in terms of computing power.
OpenAI said Anthropic had 1.4 gigawatts of computing power as of the end of last year, compared with its own 1.9 gigawatts. At the same time, OpenAI stated that it will accelerate its expansion and its computing power will reach the mid-single-digit gigawatt level by the end of this year and exceed 10 gigawatts in 2027.
In contrast, OpenAI expects Anthropic to have 3–4 GW of computing power in 2026 and 7–8 GW by the end of 2027. (Anthropic has not publicly disclosed computing power plans, but The Information magazine has reported that the company plans to build at least 10 gigawatts of computing power in the next few years.) Bloomberg first reported the OpenAI investor memo.