It is not surprising that there is currently a general shift from blockchain to artificial intelligence.
Every week there is another report of a company or individual leaving the cryptocurrency industry entirely or adding artificial intelligence to their portfolios. Bitcoin miners are moving away from mining to increasingly focus on AI infrastructure and venture capitalists are funding AI companies rather than crypto companies.
But it’s unusual for key members of the same team to leave one company and move on to another right after. That’s exactly what appears to have happened to the senior marketing team at crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN), who within about a year landed at San Francisco-based OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. Coinbase has a 150,000 square foot office in the city.
It’s worth noting that Coinbase employs a large number of marketing employees and six – although fairly senior positions – are only a small portion of the overall team.
The migration of marketing talent began with Sarah Russell, who joined OpenAI as vice president of integrated marketing and operations in November 2024. She had spent a year and three months as senior director of integrated marketing at Coinbase, a position she left in January 2023. It is worth noting that early in her career, she worked at Facebook (now Meta) headquarters in Menlo Park.
A month later, Kate Rouch became OpenAI’s director of marketing. Just before that, she spent three and a half years in the same role at Coinbase. Prior to that, she spent over 11 years as Global Head of Brand and Product Marketing at Meta.
Rouch was followed by Elke Karstens, who joined OpenAI as head of international marketing in March 2025, although without moving directly. Karstens spent three months at a London-based paid tech startup called Finom. Karstens also spent over 10 years at Meta in various marketing roles.
The following September saw two more transitions: Kaitlin Gianetti became Head of Integrated Marketing Management at OpenAI a month after leaving Coinbase, and Amy (Good) Robbins joined the company as Head of Brand Analytics directly after leaving Coinbase. Gianetti had spent just over four years as director of integrated marketing at Coinbase. Before that, she also worked as a brand marketing manager at Meta. Robbins spent three and a half years as senior information manager at Coinbase.
Most recently, Nina Mogavero joined OpenAI in December 2025 to work in marketing strategy and operations, a month after leaving Coinbase where she had spent three years in marketing and strategy.
A person familiar with the matter said the exodus was not a coincidence. The person described Rouch as the “link” when it comes to getting former Coinbase colleagues to move to OpenAI.
“To be honest, she hired a lot of them or brought them from Facebook,” they said. Kate Rouch did not respond to a request for comment.
A Coinbase spokesperson brushed off the departures. “The Coinbase marketing team is over 150 people strong and while some people left to join OpenAI last year, and we wish them the best, it would be incorrect to characterize this as anything other than normal people movements,” the spokesperson said via email.
OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment.
Marketing isn’t the only department that sees AI as more attractive than crypto. Earlier this month, Tom Duff Gordon, former vice president of international policy at Coinbase, left his position to become head of EMEA policy at OpenAI.
Other Coinbase alumni who have headed to OpenAI include
- Yi X, who joined the AI company as product manager in April 2025
- The head of design at decentralized trading platform Base, Alexandra Fitzroy, left Coinbase in October 2025 after just over five years.
- Abe Sprague left Coinbase in September 2024 to become a member of OpenAI’s data science team.
OpenAI isn’t the only machine learning shop to win over Coinbase’s marketing talent. Earlier this month, Sarah Wolf, head of marketing for Coinbase’s Base Layer 2 network, left the exchange after nearly five years to lead startup marketing at AI lab Anthropic.
