It’s no surprise that there’s a general pivot from blockchain to artificial intelligence right now.
Every week brings another report of a company or person either 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 capital firms are funding AI firms rather than crypto companies.
But it’s unusual when the leading members of the same team leave one company and jump into another just down the road. That’s exactly what appears to have happened to the senior marketing team at crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN), which, over the course of a year or so, has landed at San Francisco-based OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. Coinbase maintains a 150,000-square-foot office in the city.
It’s worth noting that Coinbase employs a large number of marketing staff and six — albeit quite senior roles — make up only a small portion of the entire team.
The marketing talent migration began with Sarah Russell, who joined OpenAI as VP, integrated marketing and ops in November 2024. She had spent one year and three months as the senior director of integrated marketing at Coinbase, a position she left in January 2023. It’s worth noting that earlier in her career, she worked at Facebook’s (now Meta) Menlo Park headquarters.
A month later, Kate Rouch became OpenAI’s chief marketing officer. Directly prior to that, she spent three and a half years in the same role at Coinbase. Before 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, though she didn’t move directly. Karstens spent three months at a London-based paytech startup called Finom. Karstens also spent over 10 years at Meta in various marketing roles.
The following September saw another two transitions: Kaitlin Gianetti became head of integrated marketing management at OpenAI a month after leaving Coinbase, and Amy (Good) Robbins joined as brand insights lead directly after leaving Coinbase. Gianetti had spent just over four years as director of integrated marketing at Coinbase. Prior to that, she also worked as a brand marketing executive at Meta. Robbins spent three and a half years as senior manager of insights 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’d spent three years in marketing and strategy.
A person familiar with the situation said the exodus was no coincidence. The person described Rouch as the “nexus,” when it comes to enticing former Coinbase colleagues to move over to OpenAI.
“To be fair, 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 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 said via email.
OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment.
Marketing isn’t the only department that’s seen AI as more attractive than crypto. Earlier this month, Tom Duff Gordon, the former VP of international policy at Coinbase, left to become OpenAI’s head of EMEA Policy.
Other Coinbase alumni who have headed to OpenAI include
- Yi X, who joined the AI firm 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 marketing talent. Earlier this month, Sarah Wolf, the marketing lead behind Coinbase’s Base layer-2 network, left after nearly five years at the exchange to head startup marketing at AI lab Anthropic.