Strategic Hardware Partnerships

📋 Description

• • Own end-to-end strategic hardware partnership relationships as the primary internal and external point of contact for OpenAI’s most critical silicon, systems, and manufacturing partners.
• • Define and drive joint strategy and roadmap alignment between OpenAI’s product and engineering priorities and partner roadmaps, translating requirements into milestones for capacity, cost targets, reliability, and timelines.
• • Conduct technical diligence to evaluate build/buy/partner options, analyzing advantages and risks across silicon, connectivity, device hardware/software stacks, operating systems, and related systems components.
• • Structure, negotiate, and close complex hardware agreements covering supply, capacity reservations, pricing/total cost of ownership (TCO), non-recurring engineering (NRE), joint development manufacturing (JDM), joint development agreements (JDA), warranties, quality terms, IP licensing, and launch/expansion/renewal mechanics.
• • Establish and lead operational governance including quarterly business reviews (QBRs), steering committees, and executive briefings to ensure accountability and alignment across OpenAI and partner teams.
• • Unblock critical issues rapidly and hold both internal and external stakeholders accountable for delivering agreed-upon outcomes and milestones.
• • Design and own the KPI framework for measuring partnership impact, including secured capacity, cost reduction, on-time new product introduction (NPI), yield/quality metrics, reliability benchmarks, supply risk indicators, and partner satisfaction scores.
• • Communicate partnership progress and performance crisply to OpenAI leadership with data-driven insights and clear narrative.
• • Build trusted, long-term relationships with partner executives to influence their product roadmaps, investment decisions, and capacity allocation strategies.
• • Collaborate cross-functionally with engineering, product, sales, finance, legal, operations, and security teams to align on partnership execution and mitigate risks in high-stakes environments.
• • Operate with high velocity in ambiguous, fast-changing environments, bringing structure, clarity, and momentum to complex, multi-year hardware programs.
• • Drive first-of-kind or industry-defining hardware partnerships that enable OpenAI’s most ambitious AI product roadmaps.
• • Translate technical and business analysis into clear recommendations for strategic hardware decisions, balancing innovation, scalability, and risk.
• • Maintain deep expertise in CM/ODM/JDM models, silicon partnerships, capacity planning, lifecycle execution, and cost modeling across global hardware ecosystems.
• • Influence product and engineering strategy at the executive level to ensure hardware partnerships directly enable OpenAI’s mission and technical goals.
• • Ensure all partnership activities comply with data security obligations and protect proprietary hardware and information entrusted to OpenAI and its partners.