It is no shock that there is a common pivot from blockchain to synthetic intelligence proper now.
Each week brings one other report of an organization or particular person both leaving the cryptocurrency trade solely or including synthetic intelligence to their portfolios. Bitcoin miners are shifting away from mining to more and more concentrate on AI infrastructure and enterprise capital companies are funding AI companies quite than crypto corporations.
Nevertheless it’s uncommon when the main members of the identical staff go away one firm and bounce into one other simply down the street. That is precisely what seems to have occurred to the senior advertising staff at crypto change Coinbase (COIN), which, over the course of a yr or so, has landed at San Francisco-based OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. Coinbase maintains a 150,000-square-foot workplace within the metropolis.
It is value noting that Coinbase employs a lot of advertising workers and 6 — albeit fairly senior roles — make up solely a small portion of all the staff.
The advertising expertise migration started with Sarah Russell, who joined OpenAI as VP, built-in advertising and ops in November 2024. She had spent one yr and three months because the senior director of built-in advertising at Coinbase, a place she left in January 2023. It is value noting that earlier in her profession, she labored at Fb’s (now Meta) Menlo Park headquarters.
A month later, Kate Rouch turned OpenAI’s chief advertising officer. Straight previous to that, she spent three and a half years in the identical function at Coinbase. Earlier than that, she spent over 11 years as world head of brand name and product advertising at Meta.
Rouch was adopted by Elke Karstens, who joined OpenAI as head of worldwide advertising in March 2025, although she did not transfer immediately. Karstens spent three months at a London-based paytech startup referred to as Finom. Karstens additionally spent over 10 years at Meta in numerous advertising roles.
The next September noticed one other two transitions: Kaitlin Gianetti turned head of built-in advertising administration at OpenAI a month after leaving Coinbase, and Amy (Good) Robbins joined as model insights lead immediately after leaving Coinbase. Gianetti had spent simply over 4 years as director of built-in advertising at Coinbase. Previous to that, she additionally labored as a model advertising government at Meta. Robbins spent three and a half years as senior supervisor of insights at Coinbase.
Most just lately, Nina Mogavero joined OpenAI in December 2025 to work in advertising technique and operations, a month after leaving Coinbase the place she’d spent three years in advertising and technique.
An individual accustomed to the state of affairs stated the exodus was no coincidence. The particular person described Rouch because the “nexus,” in terms of attractive former Coinbase colleagues to maneuver over to OpenAI.
“To be fair, she hired a lot of them or brought them from Facebook,” they stated. Kate Rouch didn’t reply to a request for remark.
A Coinbase spokesperson brushed away the departures. “The marketing team at Coinbase is over 150 people and while some folks have left to join OpenAI last year, and we wish them the best, characterizing this as anything other than normal people moves would be incorrect,” the spokesperson stated through e mail.
OpenAI didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Advertising and marketing is not the one division that is seen AI as extra engaging than crypto. Earlier this month, Tom Duff Gordon, the previous VP of worldwide coverage at Coinbase, left to turn out to be OpenAI’s head of EMEA Coverage.
Different Coinbase alumni who’ve headed to OpenAI embody
- Yi X, who joined the AI agency as product supervisor in April 2025
- The pinnacle of design at decentralized buying and selling platform Base, Alexandra Fitzroy, left Coinbase in October 2025 after simply over 5 years
- Abe Sprague left Coinbase in September 2024 to turn out to be a member of OpenAI’s information science staff.
OpenAI isn’t the one machine studying store to win over Coinbase advertising expertise. Earlier this month, Sarah Wolf, the advertising lead behind Coinbase’s Base layer-2 community, left after practically 5 years on the change to go startup advertising at AI lab Anthropic.
