The Financial Architect OpenAI Chose for Its Most Dangerous Transition

On June 14, 2024, OpenAI announced the appointment of Sarah Friar as its first Chief Financial Officer. The timing was not coincidental. OpenAI faced an existential challenge: how to transform from a nonprofit research lab into a for-profit corporation capable of raising hundreds of billions of dollars while preserving its original mission to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity.

Sam Altman needed someone who understood how to navigate complex corporate structures, manage relationships with demanding investors, and guide companies through transformational moments. He found that person in Sarah Friar—a CFO who had taken Square public in 2015 during one of the most challenging IPO markets in recent memory, then became CEO of Nextdoor and guided it through a SPAC merger in 2021.

But OpenAI's challenge dwarfs anything Friar has tackled before. The company loses $11.5 billion per quarter. It must complete a restructuring from nonprofit to for-profit by December 31, 2025, or risk losing up to $20 billion from SoftBank's committed funding. It recently achieved a $500 billion valuation in a secondary market transaction—making it the world's most valuable private company—yet has no clear path to profitability until 2029. It plans to spend over $1.4 trillion on AI infrastructure while burning through capital at unprecedented rates.

And in November 2025, Friar sparked a political firestorm by suggesting the U.S. government could "backstop" OpenAI's trillion-dollar infrastructure commitments—a comment she quickly walked back after facing immediate backlash, including from White House AI advisor David Sacks who publicly declared "There will be no federal bailout for AI."

This is the story of how a girl who grew up in a small Northern Ireland village during The Troubles—surrounded by bombings and shootings—became the financial architect for the most consequential technology company of the 21st century. It's a story about leadership under extreme pressure, the art of navigating unprecedented corporate transformations, and what it takes to build the financial foundation for artificial general intelligence.

Part I: From The Troubles to Oxford

Growing Up in Sion Mills

Sarah Jane Friar was born in 1972 and grew up in Sion Mills, a small village in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Her childhood coincided with some of the darkest years of The Troubles—the three-decade conflict between unionists (who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom) and nationalists (who wanted it to join the Republic of Ireland). Between 1968 and 1998, over 3,500 people died in the violence.

Growing up in Northern Ireland during this period meant living with constant threat. Friar has spoken publicly about being surrounded by bombings and shootings, about the pervasive sense of danger, about learning to navigate a society divided by sectarian conflict. This early experience with crisis, uncertainty, and existential threat would later inform her leadership style—particularly her ability to remain calm under pressure and make decisions when outcomes are uncertain.

Despite the challenges, Friar excelled academically. She won a scholarship from Arthur Andersen after entering a competition—her first exposure to the world of professional services and international business. She worked at Arthur Andersen for a year before attending university, gaining early exposure to corporate finance and accounting practices.

Oxford and the Path to Finance

Friar attended the University of Oxford, where she studied metallurgy, economics, and management—an unusual combination that reflected her diverse interests in engineering, business, and the humanities. She earned her Master of Engineering degree in 1996.

The metallurgy background is worth noting. Studying materials science requires understanding complex systems, analyzing trade-offs between competing properties, and making decisions under constraints—skills that translate remarkably well to corporate finance and strategic decision-making. Friar's ability to think systematically about complex problems with multiple variables would later distinguish her approach to financial leadership.

After Oxford, Friar joined McKinsey & Company as a business analyst, working in London and South Africa. McKinsey represented the traditional path for ambitious Oxford graduates seeking careers in business—prestigious, intellectually rigorous, and providing exposure to senior executives and strategic decision-making across industries.

But Friar found consulting frustrating. She particularly hated "the last day of the client engagement where we'd hand over the presentation," feeling that clients would never actually implement the strategies McKinsey developed. This frustration with the advisory model—seeing recommendations but not execution, strategy but not results—would drive her eventual transition from consulting to operating roles.

Part II: Goldman Sachs and the Foundation of Financial Expertise

A Decade on Wall Street

After McKinsey, Sarah Friar joined Goldman Sachs, where she would spend a transformative decade building and growing a team in equity research. She rose to become a managing director, covering technology companies and developing deep expertise in how public markets value high-growth businesses.

At Goldman Sachs, Friar learned several critical skills that would define her later career:

Valuation methodology: How to analyze technology companies' financial statements, project future cash flows, and determine appropriate valuation multiples. This expertise would later inform her decisions on pricing Square's IPO, structuring Nextdoor's SPAC merger, and managing OpenAI's secondary market transactions.

Investor relations: How to communicate with institutional investors, manage expectations, and build credibility with capital allocators. Goldman's equity research division serves as the interface between companies and investors—Friar learned how investors think, what they value, and what concerns them.

Public market discipline: The rigor required to satisfy quarterly earnings expectations, maintain guidance credibility, and navigate the scrutiny of public company disclosure requirements. This discipline would later help her guide two companies through the transition from private to public.

Crisis management: Friar's Goldman tenure included the 2008 financial crisis—one of the most challenging periods in modern financial history. She witnessed firsthand how companies navigate existential threats, how markets react to uncertainty, and how leadership makes decisions when survival is at stake.

The Partnership Decision

Eventually, Friar was passed over for promotion to Goldman Sachs partner—a pivotal moment that forced a career decision. Goldman's partnership represents the pinnacle of Wall Street achievement, and many executives spend entire careers pursuing it. Being passed over, particularly after a decade of strong performance, creates a choice: stay and try again, or leave for new opportunities.

Friar chose to leave. In retrospect, being passed over for partner may have been the best thing that happened to her career. It pushed her out of the comfortable Goldman ecosystem and into the technology industry during its most transformative decade.

Part III: Operator Apprenticeship at Salesforce and Square

The Transition to Operations

In 2011, Sarah Friar joined Salesforce as SVP of Strategy & Finance—her first operating role after years in consulting and investment banking. At Salesforce, she learned how technology companies actually work: how product development connects to business strategy, how sales organizations scale, how enterprise customers make buying decisions.

The Salesforce experience was brief but formative. After just one year, in 2012, Friar made an even bigger jump: she became CFO of Square, the mobile payments company co-founded by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey.

Square in 2012 was a high-growth but unprofitable payments startup with a revolutionary product (the white square dongle that turned smartphones into payment terminals) and massive ambitions to reimagine financial services for small businesses. The company faced intense skepticism from traditional payments industry players, regulatory challenges, and questions about its business model sustainability.

Friar's hiring received applause from analysts and investors, who saw her Goldman Sachs credibility and financial expertise as exactly what Square needed to mature from startup to public company. Her mandate: build the financial infrastructure, systems, and controls required for a public company; develop a long-term financial strategy; and prepare for an eventual IPO.

The 2015 Square IPO: Trial by Fire

Square's path to IPO was anything but smooth. By 2015, the IPO market for technology companies had turned cold. High-profile failures and declining valuations made investors cautious. Square filed for its IPO in October 2015, seeking a $275 million raise at a valuation of approximately $6 billion—down from its last private round valuation of $6 billion, signaling a flat or down round.

For Sarah Friar, the Square IPO represented the most challenging professional experience of her career. She later described 2015 as "professionally, personally, emotionally and physically probably the most daunting I've ever lived through." The company faced skepticism about its business model, questions about its path to profitability, and a difficult market environment.

Square priced its IPO at $9 per share in November 2015—below the expected range of $11-13—raising $243 million and valuing the company at approximately $2.9 billion, less than half its peak private valuation. The IPO was widely considered disappointing, and Square's stock immediately fell below the offering price.

But Friar's work was just beginning. Over the next three years, she guided Square through a remarkable transformation:

Business model evolution: Square expanded beyond payments processing into financial services, launching Square Capital (small business lending), Square Cash (peer-to-peer payments, later rebranded as Cash App), and Square Payroll. These higher-margin businesses diversified revenue and improved unit economics.

Financial discipline: Friar implemented rigorous cost controls and capital allocation discipline, improving gross margins and demonstrating a path to profitability. Square achieved its first profitable quarter in Q4 2015 and sustained profitability thereafter.

Investor confidence: Through consistent execution, transparent communication, and strategic acquisitions, Friar rebuilt investor confidence in Square's long-term potential. The company's market capitalization grew from $2.9 billion at IPO to over $30 billion by the time she departed in 2018.

Jack Dorsey, Square's CEO, credited Friar with helping steer the company through its IPO and subsequent growth. Her successful navigation of Square's public market debut—under extremely difficult circumstances—established her reputation as one of tech's most capable CFOs.

Part IV: From CFO to CEO at Nextdoor

The Leadership Leap

In October 2018, Sarah Friar made an unusual career move: she left her CFO position at Square to become CEO of Nextdoor, the neighborhood social network. The transition from CFO to CEO is rare—most CFOs who become CEOs do so at the same company after years as second-in-command, not by jumping to lead a different company.

Nextdoor in 2018 was a company with enormous potential and significant challenges. Founded in 2010, Nextdoor had grown to over 200,000 neighborhoods across 11 countries, with tens of millions of users. The platform enabled neighbors to connect, share recommendations, report crime, and organize community events.

But Nextdoor faced critical challenges:

Content moderation: The platform struggled with racial profiling, neighborhood disputes, and toxic behavior. Posts reporting "suspicious activity" often devolved into racial stereotyping and bias.

Business model: Nextdoor's advertising-based revenue model was under-monetizing its engaged user base, and the company faced questions about long-term profitability.

Product evolution: The platform needed to evolve beyond its original use cases to remain relevant and drive engagement.

Public market readiness: Investors expected Nextdoor to eventually go public, but the company needed operational improvements and clearer financial trajectory to succeed in public markets.

Transforming Nextdoor's Culture and Product

Friar approached the Nextdoor challenge with a combination of product innovation and cultural transformation. Her key initiatives:

Content moderation overhaul: Nextdoor implemented prompts and warnings to reduce racial profiling. When users attempted to report "suspicious activity" based solely on race or ethnicity, the platform would intervene with prompts encouraging more specific information. This intervention reduced racial profiling on the platform by nearly 70%.

Business model expansion: Friar expanded Nextdoor's advertising relationships with local businesses, creating more value for merchants while generating revenue. She emphasized that neighborhood platforms could help small businesses reach local customers more effectively than traditional advertising.

Product evolution: Under Friar's leadership, Nextdoor added features for emergency response, business directories, and community events, making the platform more essential to daily neighborhood life.

Values-driven leadership: Friar positioned Nextdoor as a "kinder" social network, explicitly contrasting it with Facebook and Twitter's toxic dynamics. She chose the stock ticker symbol "KIND" for Nextdoor's public debut—a symbolic statement about the company's values.

The 2021 SPAC Merger

In July 2021, Nextdoor announced it would go public through a merger with Khosla Ventures' SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company), valuing the company at $4.3 billion. The deal brought $686 million in gross proceeds to fund expansion and product development.

The SPAC route reflected market conditions in 2021, when traditional IPOs faced longer timelines and regulatory scrutiny, while SPACs offered faster paths to public markets. Friar sold investors on Nextdoor's vision of hyperlocal connection and its potential to capture advertising dollars from national platforms by offering better local targeting.

Nextdoor began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in November 2021 with the ticker "KIND." Shares surged 33% on the first day of trading, reaching a valuation over $6 billion. The successful debut validated Friar's three-year transformation of the company's culture, product, and business model.

Friar served as Nextdoor's CEO until May 2024, nearly six years of leadership that established her credibility not just as a financial executive but as a full-spectrum CEO capable of product strategy, cultural transformation, and public market navigation.

Part V: Joining OpenAI at the Moment of Maximum Complexity

The Unprecedented Mandate

When OpenAI announced Sarah Friar as its first CFO in June 2024, the company faced challenges unlike anything she had navigated before:

Nonprofit-to-For-Profit Restructuring: OpenAI was attempting to transform its corporate structure from a nonprofit-controlled entity to a for-profit public benefit corporation while preserving its mission and satisfying existing stakeholders—a restructuring with no clear precedent at this scale.

Massive Losses: OpenAI lost at least $11.5 billion in Q3 2024 alone, according to Microsoft financial statements. The company was burning cash at rates that made even its $40 billion funding round look insufficient for long-term sustainability.

Uncertain Path to Profitability: OpenAI projects it won't achieve profitability until 2029, requiring continuous massive capital raises for five more years. The unit economics of AI models—where inference costs scale linearly with usage—create fundamental challenges to profitability.

Trillion-Dollar Infrastructure Commitments: OpenAI has committed to spending over $1.4 trillion on AI infrastructure through partnerships like the Stargate project with SoftBank and Oracle. These commitments require complex financing structures that no company has ever attempted.

Complex Investor Relations: OpenAI must manage relationships with Microsoft (its largest investor and cloud provider), SoftBank (leading the $40 billion round), Thrive Capital, Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, and dozens of other investors with competing interests and different risk tolerances.

Restructuring Deadline: The $40 billion funding round included conditions: OpenAI must complete its restructuring to a for-profit entity by December 31, 2025, or SoftBank's commitment could be slashed from $30 billion to as low as $20 billion.

Potential IPO: While Friar has said an IPO is "not on the cards" immediately, she acknowledged that the public benefit corporation structure makes OpenAI "IPO-able" if and when the company chooses. Managing speculation about timing and valuation is a constant challenge.

Sam Altman explained Friar's appointment by noting that OpenAI needed someone who could "raise money and gain respect in the markets with investors," emphasizing that the company "hadn't really had a business plan" and needed Friar's skill set to build financial discipline. Friar herself said she felt OpenAI needed her because "Finance without strategy is really directionless, but strategy with no finance is totally toothless."

First Year Achievements

In her first 18 months as OpenAI's CFO, Sarah Friar has accomplished remarkable feats:

$6.6 Billion Series E (October 2024): Shortly after joining, Friar helped close OpenAI's Series E round at a $157 billion valuation, bringing in capital from Thrive Capital, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and others.

$40 Billion Mega-Round (March 2025): Friar orchestrated the largest private tech funding round in history, with SoftBank committing up to $30 billion and Microsoft adding $14 billion more. The round valued OpenAI at $300 billion post-money.

$500 Billion Secondary Transaction (2025): OpenAI facilitated a secondary market transaction allowing current and former employees to sell shares at a $500 billion valuation—making OpenAI the world's most valuable private company, surpassing SpaceX.

Revenue Acceleration: Under Friar's watch, OpenAI hit its first $1 billion revenue month in July 2025. The company expects $20 billion in revenue for 2025 and projects growth to "hundreds of billions" annually by 2030.

Restructuring Progress: OpenAI completed the restructuring of its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation in 2025, bringing to an end a year-and-a-half saga marked by legal disputes with Elon Musk and negotiations with Microsoft. The nonprofit parent retains control and owns 26 percent of the public benefit corporation, valued at approximately $100 billion.

Part VI: The Government Backstop Controversy

The Inciting Comment

In early November 2025, Sarah Friar sparked one of OpenAI's most significant public relations crises. Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's Tech Live conference, Friar discussed OpenAI's massive infrastructure investment plans and suggested that the U.S. government could play a role in financing them.

Specifically, Friar said OpenAI was "looking for an ecosystem of banks [and] private equity" to support its investment in AI infrastructure and that the U.S. government could "backstop the guarantee that allows the financing to happen." She compared it to government programs that de-risk private sector investment in strategic industries.

The comment immediately sparked backlash across political and technology communities. Critics interpreted it as OpenAI—a company valued at $500 billion with tens of billions in committed funding—seeking taxpayer bailouts for its capital-intensive AI development. The phrase "backstop" particularly resonated negatively, evoking memories of 2008 financial crisis bank bailouts.

The Swift Backlash

The reaction was swift and intense. David Sacks, White House AI and crypto advisor, posted on X: "There will be no federal bailout for AI." The statement represented an official government rebuke of OpenAI's comments.

Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz (an OpenAI investor), criticized the suggestion, arguing that government involvement would lead to regulatory capture and stifle innovation.

Technology industry figures expressed concern that OpenAI's comments would fuel public perception of AI companies as seeking privatized profits and socialized risks—a narrative that could invite heavier regulation and political backlash.

OpenAI went into crisis PR mode. Within 24 hours, Friar published a clarification on social media and in investor communications: "OpenAI is not seeking a government backstop for our infrastructure commitments. I used the word 'backstop' and it muddied the point."

She explained that her comments were about creating an "ecosystem" of financing partners including banks and private equity, not seeking government bailouts. She emphasized that OpenAI has "strong financial backing from our investors and partners" and doesn't need government support for its commitments.

The Underlying Tension

The controversy revealed deeper tensions about OpenAI's financial sustainability and the broader AI industry's capital requirements:

Capital intensity: Training frontier AI models requires tens of billions in compute infrastructure. OpenAI's commitment to spending over $1.4 trillion represents an unprecedented capital requirement for a private company. Whether private markets can sustainably finance these investments remains an open question.

National competitiveness: Friar's original comments reflected real concerns about whether U.S. companies can maintain AI leadership without some form of government support, given that China's government heavily subsidizes its AI industry. The question of appropriate government role in strategic technology development remains contentious.

Moral hazard: OpenAI's massive valuation and capital raises create "too big to fail" dynamics—if OpenAI were to collapse, the consequences for investors, employees, and U.S. technology leadership would be severe. This raises questions about whether OpenAI implicitly expects government support in extreme scenarios, regardless of explicit denials.

Communications discipline: The controversy highlighted the challenge of managing a public profile as CFO of the world's most watched AI company. Every comment is scrutinized, every statement potentially moves markets or influences policy. Friar's experience at Square and Nextdoor prepared her for investor communications, but OpenAI's political visibility creates unique challenges.

The episode demonstrated Friar's ability to respond quickly to crisis—within 24 hours, she had clarified the comments, communicated with investors, and quelled the controversy. But it also revealed the tightrope she walks as CFO of a company whose financial decisions have national policy implications.

Part VII: The Restructuring Challenge

Transforming OpenAI's Corporate Structure

Perhaps Sarah Friar's most complex challenge is managing OpenAI's restructuring from nonprofit-controlled entity to for-profit public benefit corporation. This restructuring represents one of the most unusual corporate transformations in business history.

OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit AI research lab with a mission to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity. In 2019, it created a "capped profit" subsidiary structure—a for-profit entity controlled by the nonprofit, where investor returns were capped at 100x to prevent mission drift driven by profit maximization.

By 2024, this structure had become untenable. OpenAI needed to raise tens of billions of dollars, and investors demanded more conventional governance and return structures. The capped profit model limited OpenAI's ability to attract capital at the scale required for AGI development.

The Restructuring Terms

The restructuring announced in 2024-2025 involves:

Public Benefit Corporation: OpenAI's for-profit subsidiary is converting to a Delaware public benefit corporation—a legal structure that requires balancing shareholder interests with public benefit mission. PBCs can pursue profits but must also advance specific public benefits (in OpenAI's case, ensuring AGI benefits humanity).

Nonprofit Ownership: The nonprofit parent retains ownership of 26 percent of the PBC, valued at approximately $100 billion. This gives the nonprofit significant influence and ongoing economic participation in OpenAI's success.

Control Transition: While the nonprofit retains significant ownership, operational control increasingly shifts to the PBC's board and management. This represents a gradual transition from nonprofit mission control to conventional corporate governance.

Employee Equity: Converting to PBC allows OpenAI to grant conventional equity to employees rather than profit participation units tied to the capped return structure. This helps OpenAI compete for talent against Google, Anthropic, and other AI labs offering standard equity compensation.

IPO Optionality: The PBC structure makes OpenAI "IPO-able"—it can access public markets if and when management decides the timing is right. Friar has emphasized that an IPO is "not on the cards" immediately but acknowledged it as a future possibility.

The Stakeholder Negotiation

Completing this restructuring requires Sarah Friar to navigate competing interests from multiple stakeholders:

Nonprofit Board: The nonprofit board must approve the restructuring and ensure it preserves OpenAI's mission. Board members face fiduciary duties to the nonprofit's charitable purpose, creating tension with investor demands for returns.

Microsoft: As OpenAI's largest investor and exclusive cloud provider, Microsoft has complex interests in the restructuring. Microsoft benefits from OpenAI's growth but also competes with OpenAI in enterprise AI sales. The restructuring affects Microsoft's economic participation and governance rights.

SoftBank: Leading the $40 billion round, SoftBank has made its investment contingent on successful restructuring by December 31, 2025. If restructuring fails, SoftBank's commitment could drop from $30 billion to $20 billion—a $10 billion consequence for missing the deadline.

Other Investors: Thrive Capital, Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, and dozens of other investors have economic interests tied to restructuring terms. Each negotiates for favorable treatment, governance rights, and liquidity options.

Employees: OpenAI's 3,000+ employees hold equity that will be affected by restructuring. Friar must ensure employees feel fairly treated to prevent talent flight to competitors.

Elon Musk and Legal Challenges: Elon Musk, OpenAI's co-founder who departed in 2018, has filed lawsuits challenging the restructuring as a betrayal of OpenAI's original nonprofit mission. While these suits face long odds legally, they create public relations challenges and potential regulatory scrutiny.

Regulators: The IRS, Delaware corporate authorities, and potentially other regulatory bodies must approve or at least not challenge the restructuring. Converting a nonprofit-controlled entity into a for-profit company worth hundreds of billions raises tax and public policy questions.

Part VIII: The Financial Reality of Building AGI

Understanding OpenAI's Economics

To appreciate Sarah Friar's challenge, one must understand OpenAI's brutal financial reality. The company faces unit economics unlike any in tech history:

Revenue growth vs. losses: OpenAI expects approximately $20 billion in revenue for 2025, up from $3.7 billion in 2024. Yet the company lost $11.5 billion in Q3 2024 alone—annualizing to over $45 billion in losses. Revenue is growing rapidly, but losses are growing faster.

Compute costs: Training frontier models costs billions. GPT-4's training run reportedly cost over $100 million. GPT-5 will cost significantly more. Inference (running models for users) costs billions annually and scales linearly with usage—unlike traditional software where marginal costs approach zero.

Capital expenditure: OpenAI must invest tens of billions in GPU clusters, data centers, and infrastructure to train future models and serve increasing user demand. The Stargate project alone represents over $1.4 trillion in planned infrastructure investment.

Talent costs: OpenAI employs 3,000+ people, many earning $500,000+ in total compensation. Top AI researchers command millions. Retaining talent against competition from Google, Anthropic, and others requires continuous compensation increases.

Microsoft dependency: Most of OpenAI's infrastructure spending flows back to Microsoft as Azure payments. This creates a circular dynamic where OpenAI raises capital to pay Microsoft for compute, enriching Microsoft as both investor and vendor.

The Path to Profitability

OpenAI projects it won't reach profitability until 2029—five years from when Friar joined. The strategy for reaching profitability involves:

Revenue scaling: Growing from $20 billion in 2025 to "hundreds of billions" by 2030 through enterprise expansion, new products, and higher pricing as models become more valuable.

Compute efficiency: Achieving 10x improvements in inference costs through better model compression, optimized serving infrastructure, and potentially custom silicon. Each model generation must deliver more capability at lower unit cost.

Margin expansion: Shifting revenue mix toward higher-margin products—enterprise contracts with annual commitments, API usage from application companies, and premium features command pricing power.

Operating leverage: Slowing headcount growth relative to revenue growth, achieving economies of scale in infrastructure spending, and reducing sales/marketing costs per dollar of revenue as the ChatGPT brand drives inbound demand.

AGI economic impact: If OpenAI achieves artificial general intelligence—AI systems that match or exceed human performance across all cognitive tasks—the economic value could be measured in trillions of dollars, making current losses irrelevant in retrospect.

Friar's role is to convince investors this path is credible despite unprecedented losses, manage cash flow to avoid running out of runway before profitability, and structure financing that funds the journey without excessive dilution.

Part IX: The Leadership Style and Personal Brand

Values-Driven Leadership

Sarah Friar brings a distinctive leadership approach to OpenAI, shaped by her background and experiences:

Mission orientation: Growing up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, Friar developed strong convictions about the importance of institutions that bring people together rather than divide them. This informs her emphasis on OpenAI's mission to ensure AGI benefits all humanity, not just shareholders.

Diversity and inclusion: As one of relatively few women CFOs in tech, Friar is a vocal advocate for gender diversity in leadership. She co-founded Ladies Who Launch, a nonprofit focused on supporting female entrepreneurs, and serves on boards (Walmart, ConsenSys) where she champions diversity initiatives.

Long-term thinking: Friar's Oxford training in metallurgy—a field requiring patience and long-term perspective—influences her approach to financial strategy. She emphasizes sustainable business models over short-term metrics, even at public companies under quarterly earnings pressure.

Operational partnership: Unlike CFOs who focus narrowly on finance, Friar sees her role as a strategic partner to the CEO. Her experience as CEO of Nextdoor gives her credibility to challenge product, sales, and strategic decisions from an operational perspective, not just a financial one.

Recognition and Influence

Friar's leadership has earned extensive recognition:

Order of the British Empire (OBE): In 2019, Queen Elizabeth II granted Friar an OBE for services to entrepreneurship and financial services—recognition of her contribution to the UK tech ecosystem despite working primarily in the U.S.

Board positions: Friar serves on the board of directors of Walmart, one of America's largest corporations, and blockchain company ConsenSys. She also serves on Operation HOPE, a nonprofit focused on financial literacy and economic empowerment.

Academic involvement: Friar co-chairs Stanford's Digital Economy Lab, serves on the advisory board of Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government, and frequently speaks at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. In November 2025, Stanford's Board of Trustees elected her as a new member.

Media presence: Friar regularly appears on CNBC, Bloomberg, and other financial media to discuss OpenAI's strategy, AI industry trends, and technology policy. Her Goldman Sachs and Square credibility gives her media gravitas rare among tech executives.

Personal Life and Priorities

Friar maintains a relatively low profile regarding her personal life, but several aspects of her approach to work-life balance and personal values are publicly known:

Ladies Who Launch: Beyond her day job, Friar co-founded and actively leads Ladies Who Launch, a nonprofit that provides resources, mentorship, and funding access to women entrepreneurs. This work reflects her commitment to using her success and network to lift others.

Irish identity: Despite decades in the United States, Friar maintains strong connections to Northern Ireland and Irish identity. She frequently speaks about her Irish background and the formative influence of growing up during The Troubles.

Family: Friar is married and has children, though she maintains privacy about family details. She has spoken about the challenge of balancing demanding executive roles with family responsibilities and the importance of organizational cultures that support working parents.

Part X: The Challenges Ahead

Can OpenAI Reach Profitability?

The central question facing Sarah Friar is whether OpenAI's business model can ever generate sustainable profits given AI's economics. Several scenarios could prevent profitability:

Compute costs don't fall fast enough: If inference costs remain high relative to revenue per query, OpenAI may never achieve positive unit economics at scale. The company's projections assume 10x efficiency improvements by 2029—if reality falls short, profitability slips further into the future or becomes impossible.

Competition intensifies: Anthropic, Google, Meta, Amazon, and others are racing to build competitive models. If models commoditize and competition drives prices down faster than costs fall, margins compress and profitability becomes elusive.

AGI doesn't arrive on schedule: OpenAI's long-term valuation and profitability projections implicitly assume achieving AGI or near-AGI capabilities that justify premium pricing. If AGI proves harder than expected, OpenAI may struggle to grow revenue fast enough to outpace costs.

Regulatory constraints: Government regulation could limit OpenAI's ability to deploy models, collect data, or charge market prices. Safety requirements, liability regimes, or anti-monopoly interventions could undermine the business model.

The Restructuring Deadline

OpenAI must complete its nonprofit-to-for-profit restructuring by December 31, 2025, or risk losing up to $10 billion from SoftBank's committed funding. Friar faces several obstacles:

Nonprofit board approval: The nonprofit board must approve terms that preserve mission while satisfying investor demands—a difficult balance. Any board member who believes the restructuring betrays the charitable mission could block it.

Regulatory approval: The IRS and other regulators must approve or at least not challenge the transaction. Converting a tax-exempt nonprofit's asset (control of a for-profit subsidiary) into direct for-profit ownership raises tax questions.

Legal challenges: Elon Musk's lawsuits and potential other challenges could delay the restructuring even if legally weak. Litigation timelines may not fit OpenAI's December 31 deadline.

The IPO Question

Sarah Friar has guided two companies through public market debuts—Square's difficult 2015 IPO and Nextdoor's 2021 SPAC merger. OpenAI's potential IPO would dwarf both in scale and complexity.

If OpenAI eventually goes public, it would likely be the largest tech IPO in history, surpassing Alibaba's $25 billion 2014 offering. Friar has acknowledged that the PBC structure makes OpenAI "IPO-able" if and when the company chooses, but she has downplayed imminent plans.

The IPO timing presents a strategic dilemma:

Going public earlier provides liquidity for employees and early investors, creates a currency (public stock) for acquisitions, and establishes market discipline. But it subjects OpenAI to quarterly earnings pressure and public scrutiny that could constrain long-term AI research investments.

Staying private longer preserves flexibility to invest for long-term AGI development without quarterly pressure. But it requires continuous private funding rounds at escalating valuations, creates employee liquidity challenges, and leaves OpenAI vulnerable to private market sentiment shifts.

Friar's experience navigating both paths—Square's traditional IPO and Nextdoor's SPAC—gives her unique perspective on the trade-offs. Her decision on when and how to take OpenAI public may be the most consequential of her career.

Conclusion: Building the Financial Foundation for AGI

Sarah Friar's journey from a small Northern Ireland village during The Troubles to CFO of the world's most valuable private company is more than a personal success story. It's a case study in how leadership, financial expertise, and values-driven decision-making shape transformational technology companies.

At OpenAI, Friar faces challenges that eclipse anything she navigated at Square or Nextdoor:

- Managing $11.5 billion quarterly losses while projecting a path to profitability five years away

- Completing an unprecedented corporate restructuring with a December 31, 2025 deadline and $10 billion at stake

- Navigating relationships with Microsoft, SoftBank, and dozens of other investors with competing interests

- Building financial infrastructure to support $1.4 trillion in planned infrastructure investment

- Managing public perception and policy implications of every financial decision

- Potentially guiding the largest tech IPO in history at some future date

Whether Friar succeeds will determine not just OpenAI's fate, but the broader question of whether private markets can sustainably finance the race to AGI. If OpenAI achieves profitability by 2029 and successfully transitions to a sustainable for-profit structure, it validates the business model for AGI development and encourages more capital allocation to frontier AI. If OpenAI fails to reach profitability or requires government support to sustain operations, it suggests fundamental problems with AI economics that will affect every company in the space.

Friar brings unique credibility to this challenge. She has taken two companies public in difficult market conditions. She has operated as both CFO and CEO, understanding the full spectrum of business leadership. She has navigated corporate transformations, stakeholder conflicts, and public market scrutiny. Her Goldman Sachs training, Square IPO experience, and Nextdoor CEO tenure have prepared her for this moment.

But OpenAI's challenge may exceed even her formidable experience. No company has ever attempted a corporate transformation of this magnitude—from nonprofit research lab to $500 billion for-profit corporation. No company has ever committed to spending over $1 trillion on infrastructure while losing billions quarterly. No CFO has ever had to balance the financial requirements of AGI development with the policy implications of building technology that could reshape human civilization.

In March 2025, speaking at Goldman Sachs, Friar said that 2025 would be "the year of agents" for OpenAI—the year when AI systems would move from chatbots to autonomous agents capable of complex tasks. She also could have called it "the year of restructuring"—the year when OpenAI completes its transformation into a for-profit entity capable of financing the final push to AGI.

For a girl who grew up dodging bombs in Northern Ireland, navigating OpenAI's financial complexity must feel strangely familiar. The stakes are existential, the path forward uncertain, the pressure immense. But as she learned during The Troubles, when survival is at stake, you make decisions with incomplete information, you maintain calm under threat, and you focus on the mission despite the chaos.

Sarah Friar has spent her career preparing for this moment. Whether she succeeds in building the financial foundation for AGI will define not just her legacy, but the trajectory of artificial intelligence and its impact on human society. The world is watching—even if most don't fully understand what's at stake.