Former Palantir CISO Dane Stuckey joins OpenAI to lead security

Dane Stuckey, the former CISO of analytics firm Palantir, has joined OpenAI as its newest CISO, serving alongside OpenAI head of security Matt Knight.

Stuckey announced the move in a post on X Tuesday evening.

“Security is germane to OpenAI’s mission,” he said. “It is critical we meet the highest standards for compliance, trust, and security to protect hundreds of millions of users of our products, enable democratic institutions to maximally benefit from these technologies, and drive the development of safe AGI for the world.”

Stuckey started at Palantir in 2014 on the information security team as a detection engineering and incident response lead. Prior to joining Palantir, Stuckey spent over a decade in various commercial, government, and intelligence community digital forensics, incident detection/response, and security program development roles, according to his blog.

Stuckey’s work at Palantir, an AI company rich in government contracts, could perhaps help advance OpenAI’s ambitions in that area. Forbes reports that, through its partner Carahsoft, a government contractor, OpenAI is seeking to establish a closer relationship with the U.S. Department of Defense.

Since it lifted its ban on selling AI tech to the military, OpenAI has worked with the Pentagon on several software projects, including ones related to cybersecurity. It’s also appointed former head of the National Security Agency, retired Gen. Paul Nakasone, as board member.

OpenAI has been beefing up the security side of its operation in recent months.

Several weeks ago, the company posted a job listing for a head of trusted compute and cryptography to lead a new team focused on building “secure AI infrastructure.” This infrastructure would entail capabilities to protect AI tech, security tool evaluations, and access controls “that advance AI security,” per the description.