It is no shock that there is a basic pivot from blockchain to synthetic intelligence proper now.
Each week brings one other report of an organization or individual both leaving the cryptocurrency business solely or including synthetic intelligence to their portfolios. Bitcoin miners are shifting away from mining to more and more deal with AI infrastructure and enterprise capital companies are funding AI companies moderately than crypto corporations.
However it’s uncommon when the main members of the identical workforce depart one firm and leap into one other simply down the highway. That is precisely what seems to have occurred to the senior advertising and marketing workforce at crypto alternate 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 price noting that Coinbase employs a lot of advertising and marketing employees and 6 — albeit fairly senior roles — make up solely a small portion of your complete workforce.
The advertising and marketing expertise migration started with Sarah Russell, who joined OpenAI as VP, built-in advertising and marketing and ops in November 2024. She had spent one yr and three months because the senior director of built-in advertising and marketing at Coinbase, a place she left in January 2023. It is price 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 and marketing officer. Straight previous to that, she spent three and a half years in the identical position at Coinbase. Earlier than that, she spent over 11 years as international head of brand name and product advertising and marketing at Meta.
Rouch was adopted by Elke Karstens, who joined OpenAI as head of worldwide advertising and marketing in March 2025, although she did not transfer straight. Karstens spent three months at a London-based paytech startup referred to as Finom. Karstens additionally spent over 10 years at Meta in varied advertising and marketing roles.
The next September noticed one other two transitions: Kaitlin Gianetti turned head of built-in advertising and marketing administration at OpenAI a month after leaving Coinbase, and Amy (Good) Robbins joined as model insights lead straight after leaving Coinbase. Gianetti had spent simply over 4 years as director of built-in advertising and marketing at Coinbase. Previous to that, she additionally labored as a model advertising and marketing govt at Meta. Robbins spent three and a half years as senior supervisor of insights at Coinbase.
Most lately, Nina Mogavero joined OpenAI in December 2025 to work in advertising and marketing technique and operations, a month after leaving Coinbase the place she’d spent three years in advertising and marketing and technique.
An individual conversant in the state of affairs stated the exodus was no coincidence. The individual described Rouch because the “nexus,” in the case of attractive former Coinbase colleagues to maneuver over to OpenAI.
“To be truthful, she employed lots of them or introduced them from Fb,” they stated. Kate Rouch didn’t reply to a request for remark.
A Coinbase spokesperson brushed away the departures. “The advertising and marketing workforce at Coinbase is over 150 individuals and whereas some people have left to affix OpenAI final yr, and we want them the very best, characterizing this as something aside from regular individuals strikes could be incorrect,” the spokesperson stated through e-mail.
OpenAI didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Advertising is not the one division that is seen AI as extra enticing 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 workforce.
OpenAI isn’t the one machine studying store to win over Coinbase advertising and marketing expertise. Earlier this month, Sarah Wolf, the advertising and marketing lead behind Coinbase’s Base layer-2 community, left after practically 5 years on the alternate to move startup advertising and marketing at AI lab Anthropic.
