OpenAI hires former xAI CFO Liberatore- CNBC

Published 16/09/2025, 05:58

Investing.com-- OpenAI has hired Mike Liberatore, former CFO at Elon Musk’s xAI, to be its business finance officer, CNBC reported on Tuesday, citing a statement from the Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence startup. 

Liberatore will begin at OpenAI from Tuesday, CNBC reported. He had left xAI in July after only three months on the job. 

Liberatore’s hiring comes amid a bitter feud between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk, as the latter repeatedly attempted to thwart OpenAI’s plans to turn into a for-profit entity. OpenAI had marked major progress towards that goal last week, having reached a framework deal with top backer Microsoft. 

Musk has repeatedly engaged in personal attacks against Altman on social media. 

Prior to xAI, Liberatore spent about nine years at Airbnb, and had also served in senior finance positions at eBay and PayPal. At xAI, Liberatore helped arrange at least $10 billion in funding for the startup. 

His exit was reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier in September, and was part of several high-profile departures from Musk’s startup. 

xAI was seeking a $200 billion valuation during a funding round in July, reports had shown then. OpenAI was valued at $500 billion following a share sale in August. The startup clinched Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. (TYO:9984) as a major investor earlier this year. 

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