OpenAI has hired Mike Liberatore, the former finance chief at Elon Musk’s xAI, to serve as its new business finance officer. His job? Keeping tabs on the company’s ballooning AI infrastructure costs and making sure the compute taps don’t run dry.

Liberatore will report directly to CFO Sarah Friar and work alongside Greg Brockman’s team as OpenAI doubles down on scaling its resources.

Now, if the name sounds familiar, it should—Liberatore had only recently left xAI after a short stint but not before steering a massive $5 billion debt raise and a matching equity investment.

It’s a résumé move that signals OpenAI is not just chasing AI brains, but also hunting the financial heavyweights who know how to keep the lights on in the age of multimillion-dollar GPU clusters.

What makes this juicier is the backstory. Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI, has spent much of the past year embroiled in legal clashes with the company.

His lawsuits accused OpenAI of drifting from its mission, while OpenAI fired back with countersuits, claiming harassment. Against that backdrop, bringing in a former Musk lieutenant looks less like coincidence and more like a statement.

And let’s not ignore the wider stage. The race to dominate AI is bleeding into finance, with titans like Goldman Sachs deploying generative AI assistants across tens of thousands of staff to shave off costs and speed up decision-making.

At the same time, regulators from California to India are warning that AI’s financial footprint—whether in compliance, lending, or infrastructure investment—needs fresh guardrails before it spirals.

Here’s my take: OpenAI’s move is not just about one executive. It’s about sending a message to rivals, investors, and even regulators:

“We’re ready to manage this like the trillion-dollar industry it’s becoming.” Whether that confidence pays off or turns into hubris is a story still waiting to be written.

Origianl Creator: Mark Borg
Original Link: https://ai2people.com/openai-poaches-ex-xai-cfo-as-finance-arms-race-heats-up/
Originally Posted: Tue, 16 Sep 2025 05:59:18 +0000