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OpenAI is seeking a Head of First Party Chip Finance to lead financial strategy and execution for the company's custom silicon initiatives. This is a director-level finance role that bridges chip design, engineering, infrastructure, supply chain, and corporate finance to translate technical roadmaps into disciplined investment decisions and sound financial execution.
You will own the full chip development lifecycle from evaluation through production deployment. Key responsibilities include:
- Lead financial evaluation of custom silicon programs, assessing development investment, production economics, deployment assumptions, and expected returns against alternative compute options.
- Build and maintain program-level financial models and multiyear forecasts connecting engineering milestones, development spending, manufacturing volumes, supplier commitments, and cash requirements.
- Partner closely with chip design and engineering leadership on technical decisions affecting performance, power consumption, cost, and time to market, translating complex tradeoffs into clear financial recommendations.
- Develop detailed understanding of chip and system costs (wafers, manufacturing yields, packaging, memory, testing, integration) and identify opportunities to improve economics as programs scale from development to production.
- Collaborate with Supply Chain and Procurement on supplier strategy, commercial negotiations, capacity reservations, volume commitments, prepayments, and contractual risk management.
- Work with Treasury, Corporate Finance, Accounting, Tax, and Legal on financing structures, financial exposure management, and program execution support.
- Support commercial deployment and pricing decisions through unit economics analysis, total cost of ownership modeling, and assessment of technical performance versus economic value.
- Establish budgets, reporting, and financial controls providing timely visibility into spending, commitments, milestones, and emerging risks. Build and lead a small, high-performing finance team while remaining hands-on in analysis.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Prior experience leading finance for semiconductor or custom silicon programs, with direct ownership of investment analysis, program budgets, and financial decisions across chip development and production.
- Undergraduate degree in a technical discipline, preferably electrical engineering or computer science; MBA or equivalent business experience preferred.
- 10+ years of experience in semiconductor finance, hardware finance, strategic finance, or related fields, with substantial responsibility for complex technical programs.
- Strong command of semiconductor economics: development costs, manufacturing yields, packaging and memory costs, production ramps, and supplier commitments.
- Excellent financial modeling skills; ability to independently build models, test assumptions, quantify uncertainty, and recommend paths forward.
- Technical credibility to work with chip designers and engineering leaders, understand constraints, and evaluate tradeoffs across performance, power, cost, and timing.
- Experience supporting supplier negotiations, prepayments, and major investment commitments in partnership with supply chain and finance teams.
- Hands-on operating style with clear communication and judgment to introduce financial discipline while enabling technical teams to move quickly. Comfortable using technology and AI to enhance analysis and decision-making.
- Strong track record hiring, leading, and developing high-performing teams.
