OpenAI Ethics Lead Chloé Bakalar Exits After Under a Year

OpenAI's AI ethics lead, Chloé Bakalar, has left the company less than a year after joining, according to the Financial Times. Bakalar joined in August 2025 from Meta, where she had been chief ethicist since 2019.

The exit lands in a run of high-profile departures from OpenAI's safety and ethics leadership. In July, safety systems head Johannes Heidecke told colleagues he would leave the company by July 24. Heidecke had joined in 2021 as an AI safety analyst and moved into the top safety role in 2024, after previous head Lilian Weng left to co-found Thinking Machines Lab. Around the same time, safety teams were folded under Mia Glaese, whose title expanded to VP of Research and Safety. Bakalar's departure adds to a heavier-than-usual run of OpenAI coverage on our tracker this quarter.

The FT report is single-sourced and neither Bakalar nor OpenAI has publicly explained why she left. Departing OpenAI researchers over the past two years have, in their own posts, pointed to what they describe as a deprioritization of safety amid rapid commercialization and frequent model releases. Whether that framing applies to Bakalar's decision is not established in the reporting, and her LinkedIn still lists AI Ethics Lead at OpenAI as her role.

The FT piece does not name a successor or say how the ethics function will be structured next, which is the more useful question for anyone relying on OpenAI's internal review to flag issues before models ship. Enterprise buyers in regulated sectors will want to know who owns those calls now, and rival labs positioning on safety credentials pick up a fresh talking point. Independent safety organizations also stand to benefit if this pattern keeps feeding the outside labor pool.