Alignment Research Center founder joins OpenAI board

Paul Christiano, founder of the Alignment Research Center, has joined the OpenAI Foundation Board and its Safety and Security Committee, OpenAI announced on September 9. He also gets a seat on the OpenAI Group PBC Board, but as a non-voting observer.

OpenAI describes the committee as the body that provides governance over safety and security practices across the company. It credits Christiano’s alignment work and his years at NIST, saying he brings “an independent voice to challenge assumptions, assess safeguards, and reinforce accountability around critical decisions.” The Financial Times headlined the appointment as OpenAI naming a top US official from the model testing agency to its board.

The committee’s powers come from last year’s restructuring. On October 28, 2025, OpenAI converted its capped-profit LLC into OpenAI Group PBC, and the nonprofit, renamed the OpenAI Foundation, kept board control and roughly 26% of the equity. Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings secured OpenAI’s commitment to keep the Safety and Security Committee with the nonprofit, with authority to require mitigation measures “up to and including halting the release of models or AI systems,” even where risk thresholds would otherwise allow a release, Transformer reported. Jennings also said PBC directors “may not consider the pecuniary interests of stockholders” on safety and security issues.

The two boards have mostly been the same people. Transformer reported that they were virtually identical, with Foundation directors who largely defer to Altman also appointed to the PBC board. Christiano breaks that pattern only halfway: he gets a vote at the Foundation and on the committee, and none at the PBC, where the company’s day-to-day decisions are made.

He joins a committee that already has a live case. In August, OpenAI halted some internal work with Astra, its unreleased model, over concerns about the cyber threat it could pose.