Former OpenAI CEO Kevin Weil is now a member of Stoke Space’s board of directors

Kevin Weil, a veteran tech executive known for his stints at Twitter, Meta, Planet Labs, and OpenAI, has joined the board of Stoke Space, a well-funded Seattle startup that is building reusable rockets to compete with SpaceX.

“It’s very simple for me,” Stoke CEO Andy Labsa told TechCrunch of meeting Weil when he co-founded Stoke in 2020 and shortly after joined Y Combinator. Winter batch. “I came out of engineering, started a company, and had no idea how to fundraise. I had no idea how Silicon Valley worked. And I had no network. Kevin (an early investor in the company with his wife, Elizabeth, through their fund) Scribble projects) with all that background and was able to help me think about fundraising and launching the company.

The two continued to talk while Labsa raised $1.34 billion – incl $510 million Series D Funding round in 2025 – to build a fast, reusable rocket that can fly this year. Now, it seems like the right time for Weil to join the board as a director to help continue scaling the company. Stoke declined to make Weil available for an interview, and did not respond to TechCrunch’s outreach.

Weil’s previous work has focused on digital products and platforms, which don’t feature clearly on Stoke’s roadmap. He was most recently the head of OpenAI’s effort to accelerate scientific research, Leaving the company After the work of this program spread more widely across the frontier laboratory in April. He previously served as Chief Product Officer at OpenAI from June 2024 until October 2025.

Will’s latest post raises an obvious question: It was OpenAI’s Sam Altman It is said He started working in Stoke last year and is considering investing in rival SpaceX. Could Weil be the liaison between a frontier AI lab and a potential partner in space? Labsa declined to comment on the “gossip and rumours” around OpenAI, saying that Will’s role was to focus on Stock itself.

Stoke is building the Nova rocket, which aims to be fully reusable and can be flown over and over again. No one has done this before, as SpaceX came this close to Starship with its massive rocket. The technological challenges of reusing the rocket — especially its ability to withstand the extreme heat generated by reentering Earth’s atmosphere from space — have deterred even space investors with deep pockets. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, where Labsa once worked, has toyed with this approach, but has not prioritized it.

Now, though, SpaceX has made its debut on the stock market, with much of its value riding on it Elon Musk promises The fact that the spacecraft will launch operational missions this year has demonstrated Labsa’s foresight. Despite billions of dollars invested in new launch vehicles, there aren’t enough rockets, and the next company to get a reasonably priced rocket that flies regularly promises to win.

“The world realizes that the launch process has not been resolved yet,” Labsa said. “The idea of ​​complete and rapid reuse was more or less present at the time…it has now become more or less normalized, and people now see it as inevitable.”

It is worth noting that the idea of ​​building distributed data centers in space to take advantage of solar energy and escape the political restrictions imposed on Earth has captured the imagination of some venture capitalists. The main hurdle is the cost of sending all these computer chips into orbit. Space data centers “really only make sense through rapid, complete reuse,” Labsa said, which could be a key differentiator for Stock when its rocket begins to fly.

Military contracts will also be key to the company’s success, and Will has experience bridging the gap between Silicon Valley and the Department of Defense; He was one of Four technical movers and shakers Who joined the US Army Reserve in an effort to improve recruitment and cooperation between the military and industry. This is not his first time in the space field. Will served as president of Planet Labs, a satellite Earth observation company, for three years until it went public in 2021.

Whatever Weil can add to the company’s strategy as it approaches delivery of an operational launch vehicle, the company must implement it.

“We’ve got a lot of the risks behind us, and we have further to go,” Labsa said. “We’ll work as hard as we can, and we’ll go when it’s ready.”