As OpenAI prepares to public in the near future, the AI company is amping up its team with the big guns from the industry. In a fresh development, the company has roped-in former White House AI advisor Dean Ball to lead its frontier lab initiative dubbed Strategic Futures.
Ball will be joining OpenAI’s team on July 6, he said in a post on X confirming the development. The senior AI advisor will be in-charge of a new team assigned to the Strategic Futures division at OpenAI, which is a frontier lab focussed on leading the R&D on the future of advanced AI models.
During his time as an AI policy expert at the White House, Ball authored the official AI Action Plan released last year in July. As per reports, soon after this document was published, Ball stepped down for his role at the White House. He has also been associated with thinktanks like Foundation for American Innovation and the Heritage Foundation as a senior fellow over the last year.
At OpenAI, Ball will be working closely with chief strategy officer Jason Kwon on shaping OpenAI’s policies around internal governance and future AI models.
Commenting on Ball’s appointment Kwon said, “Really glad Dean is joining OpenAI. He’s spent a lot of time thinking seriously about the biggest questions frontier labs need to get right: risk, governance, frontier policy issues, and what comes next.”
Along with Ball, OpenAI will also be wecoming former co-lead at Google Gemini, Noam Shazeer into its team. Shazeer, who had first joined Google in the year 2000, is widely regarded among the foundational brains to have shaped up the modern generative AI.
On Thursday, Shazeer also announced his move to OpenAI through a post on X.
“I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining OpenAI and look forward to working with the exceptional team there,”he noted.
As per OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the company could go public within the next one year. Earlier this month, it submitted a confidential S-1 registration document with the U.S. SEC for a preliminary review. OpenAI initially eyed a revenue goal of $30 billion for 2026, however Forbes estimates that its IPO could expand its aim for up to a trillion dollar valuation.
The White House, itself, is reportedly looking to purchase a stake in OpenAI. If the deal materializes, OpenAI could let the U.S. government get equity in the $850 billion company, in exchange for the creation of a “Public Wealth Fund”. This fund would be a government-managed investment vehicle seeded with equity from top AI companies with the aim of distributing profits from U.S.’ AI efforts to the American investor community.
