OpenAI’s head of safety systems, Johannes Heidecke, informed staff this week in July 2026 that he is leaving the company, following a reorganization that integrates OpenAI’s safety and research teams.
In a memo to staff, chief research officer Mark Chen announced that OpenAI’s safety teams will now report to Mia Glaese, who expands her role from VP of research and head of alignment to VP of research and safety. Saachi Jain, a former safety team lead at OpenAI, will serve as interim head of safety systems, reporting to Glaese.
Heidecke joined OpenAI in 2021 as an AI safety analyst and became head of safety systems in 2024, after his predecessor Lilian Weng departed to co-found Thinking Machines Lab. In a statement to WIRED, Chen said: “It’s important that our safety work is integrated with frontier-model development, with an earlier and more direct role in shaping key model, product, and launch decisions.”
Chen cited growing operational pressures as context for the restructuring. “The demands on safety continue to increase—we are training models at a much faster cadence, and release cycles have come down greatly in turn,” he wrote. “As a result, we have bigger coordination challenges around safety today than ever before.”
Heidecke’s exit is part of a broader wave of departures at OpenAI. Also this week, chief futurist Joshua Achiam told colleagues he would leave after nine years researching safety, and CEO of AGI deployment Fidji Simo announced she would step down following an extended medical leave. Greg Brockman, who had been leading product teams in Simo’s absence, will also take on go-to-market strategy.
The departures come as OpenAI launches increasingly capable models. Earlier this week, the company released GPT-5.6, its most capable model to date on agentic coding tasks, though OpenAI noted the model showed concerning forms of misaligned behavior compared to previous releases.
Source: WIRED