---
title: "OpenAI reportedly disbanded its AI risk preparedness team"
url: https://www.parallelquant.com/posts/openai-reportedly-disbanded-its-ai-risk-preparedness-team-8dfb7c
source_name: "The Verge"
source_url: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/980817/openai-disbands-preparedness-team
published: 2026-08-16T21:32:56.000Z
topics: ["policy", "security"]
publisher: "Parallel Quant"
---

# OpenAI reportedly disbanded its AI risk preparedness team

*2026-08-16 · Source: [The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/980817/openai-disbands-preparedness-team)*

The Financial Times reports OpenAI disbanded its preparedness team, the group tasked with assessing whether models pose serious risks such as bio or cyber misuse, at the end of last month. Responsibility for those risk areas has reportedly been split up and folded into existing product teams rather than owned by a dedicated unit.

**Why it matters:** This lands right after separate reports that OpenAI paused frontier reinforcement learning (RL) training and slowed model development over cyberattack risk fears, so dissolving a dedicated risk-assessment team cuts against that stated caution. It fits a broader pattern of OpenAI restructuring safety functions as it heads toward an IPO, and raises the question of whether risk assessment gets diluted when spread across product teams instead of centralized.

**Topics:** policy, security

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Read the original: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/980817/openai-disbands-preparedness-team
Canonical: https://www.parallelquant.com/posts/openai-reportedly-disbanded-its-ai-risk-preparedness-team-8dfb7c
Published by Parallel Quant — https://www.parallelquant.com