Sarah Friar

Sarah Friar is Chief Financial Officer of OpenAI, joining in June 2024 to lead finance as the company scales research, products, infrastructure, and global operations. OpenAI said her role would include supporting continued investment in core research and ensuring the company can scale for a growing customer base and complex global environment.

Before OpenAI, Friar was CEO and President of Nextdoor from December 2018 to May 2024. She helped take Nextdoor public in 2021 under the NYSE ticker KIND and served as chairperson of the board from November 2021 to March 2024. Nextdoor announced in February 2024 that co-founder Nirav Tolia would return as CEO, with Friar stepping down in an orderly Q2 2024 transition.

Earlier, Friar was CFO of Square, now Block, from 2012 to 2018, where she helped lead the company through its 2015 IPO. She previously held senior finance and strategy roles at Salesforce, worked at Goldman Sachs from 2000 to 2011, and began her career at McKinsey in London and South Africa.

Friar grew up in Northern Ireland. She earned a Master of Engineering in Metallurgy, Economics, and Management from the University of Oxford and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she graduated as an Arjay Miller Scholar. She co-founded Ladies Who Launch, serves on Walmart’s board, serves on the Consensys board, and is a Stanford University trustee.

• Friar invests as an individual angel rather than through a dedicated public venture fund. Signal lists her as an angel investor with a $5K-$50K range and a $25K sweet spot.
• Her disclosed angel portfolio clusters around fintech infrastructure, developer infrastructure, social/community platforms, health/education software, sustainability, and AI-enabled operational workflows.
• Her own operating pattern suggests she values mission plus scale: she told Bessemer she was drawn to Nextdoor because she wanted work with “a really big impact on something that matters in the world.”
• Her fundraising lens is disciplined and operator-driven. On Bessemer’s podcast she framed a financing decision around: “Do we have the right team? Do we have great ideas and do we have proof points of strong product-market fit?”
• Her OpenAI writing emphasizes practical adoption, monetization discipline, and value creation: “If it does not add value, it does not belong.”
• She appears most relevant for founders who can benefit from CFO-level operating judgment, capital markets knowledge, go-to-market scaling experience, public-company readiness, and networks across Square/Block, Nextdoor, OpenAI, Walmart, Stanford, and Ladies Who Launch.