Sarah Friar is Chief Financial Officer of OpenAI. OpenAI announced in June 2024 that Friar was joining as CFO to lead a finance team supporting continued investment in OpenAI's core research and the scaling of the company. Before OpenAI, Friar served as CEO of Nextdoor and as CFO at Square, and earlier worked at Goldman Sachs, McKinsey and Salesforce. In an August 2026 OpenAI article, Friar describes building OpenAI's finance function around AI, with goals of a zero-day close and automated, continuously updated forecasting.123
At a glance
- Current role
- Chief Financial Officer
- Company
- OpenAI
- Sector
- Company
- Work listed
- 1
- Sources cited
- 3
- Profile reviewed
Career
OpenAI announced Sarah Friar as its Chief Financial Officer in June 2024, and OpenAI's 2026 articles by Friar continue to identify Friar as the company's CFO.1
Teaching and writing
In a series of 2026 OpenAI articles, Friar has written about measuring and organizing work around AI. A July 2026 piece introduced an AI scorecard built on useful work, cost per successful task, dependability and return on compute, and an August 2026 piece explained how advances in chips, compute, models and products compound to deliver more useful intelligence at lower cost.1
Friar's August 2026 article on building an AI-native finance function describes setting goals of a zero-day close and automated, continuously updated forecasting at OpenAI. It offers five lessons for finance leaders: give everyone access to AI tools, redesign whole workflows around decisions, let finance staff become builders, pair speed with accountability and controls, and measure value per unit of intelligence.3
Work and contributions
What building an AI-native finance function taught me (OpenAI, 2026)
Author of an August 2026 OpenAI article sharing five lessons from building OpenAI's finance function around AI, including work toward a zero-day close and continuous forecasting.31
Timeline
Other documented roles
Roles the sources document that are not confirmed as current.
Where they work
- OpenAI 63 people in the wiki
Related people
- Alex NicholAlso at OpenAI
- Jacob SteinhardtAlso at OpenAI
- Jason WeiAlso at OpenAI
- Alec RadfordAlso at OpenAI
- Peter SteinbergerAlso at OpenAI
- Weizhu ChenBuilders & open source
- Brandon YangBuilders & open source
- Valentina PyatkinBuilders & open source
Suggest a correction or removal
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References
3 sources · profile reviewed Oct 21, 2026 · data updated Oct 21, 2026
- OpenAI News RSS feed (item of 2026-08-10, "OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar shares five lessons…")
- OpenAI welcomes Sarah Friar (CFO) and Kevin Weil (CPO) (read via Internet Archive snapshot of 2026-07-22)
- What building an AI-native finance function taught me, by Sarah Friar (read via Internet Archive snapshot of 2026-10-16)