Caitlin Kalinowski
Highest-profile departure from OpenAI over the Pentagon deal, resigning as hardware and robotics lead citing ethical concerns about military AI applications.
Caitlin Kalinowski joined OpenAI in late 2024 to lead the company’s hardware and robotics initiatives, bringing deep experience from her years leading augmented reality glasses development at Meta (formerly Facebook). Before Meta, she worked at Apple on the MacBook Pro and other hardware products. Her hire was seen as a signal that OpenAI was serious about moving beyond software into physical AI systems.
Resignation Over Military AI
Kalinowski resigned from OpenAI in the wake of the company’s Pentagon deal, publicly citing ethical concerns about the military applications of AI technology. Her departure was the highest-profile exit from OpenAI tied directly to the defense contract, and it underscored the tension between OpenAI’s stated safety commitments and its rapid move to replace Anthropic on classified military networks. While other employees reportedly shared her concerns, Kalinowski was the most senior figure to act on them publicly.
Significance
The resignation carried weight precisely because of Kalinowski’s background — she was not a safety researcher or policy advocate by training, but an engineering leader with a track record of shipping consumer hardware at scale. Her objection was not ideological abstraction but a concrete judgment that the terms of the Pentagon deal crossed a line. Her departure complicated Sam Altman’s internal narrative that OpenAI could serve the military while maintaining the same “red lines” as Anthropic, and gave external critics a credible insider voice to point to.