OpenAI replaces chief revenue officer after 9 months as leadership shake-up continues

OpenAI hires new CRO as executive shake-up continues

OpenAI has replaced chief revenue officer Denise Dresser after just nine months on the job, tapping Wiz president and chief operating officer Dali Rajic to take on frontier lab's top sales job. The move comes as part of a broader shake-up in the organization in the last month, which has seen the departures of COO Brad Lightcap, and the company's number two executive, CEO of AGI deployment Fidji Simo. OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman has taken a larger role in management following Simo's departure, and announced Rajic's arrival today in a blog post. Wiz, Rajic's previous employer, was acquired by Google for $32 billion this year in the tech giant's largest-ever acquisition. "Denise has led our revenue organization through a formative period for the business and has worked tirelessly to get the team to where it is today," Brockman wrote. "The way we're deploying this technology is changing rapidly, and Dali will turn what we've learned into repeatable execution as we build out the full system to make AI broadly useful for people and businesses." OpenAI says its products reach more than one billion weekly active users, and two million businesses. Despite the incredible growth and its powerful models, however, executives have suggested both privately and publicly that the company hasn't hit all of its revenue goals. The company says it has filed confidentially with the SEC ahead of a potential IPO, but it's not clear when that will take place. Private firms often try to round out their executive ranks ahead of a public markets debut. OpenAI purchased $7 billion worth of shares from employees this week in a tender offer that allowed them to cash in on some of their equity compensation, which may suggest a delay in the public offering. Bloomberg News' coverage of the change-up referenced an OpenAI blog post that said the company needed to have a "relentless focus" on "measurable business impact," but those comments appear to have been removed from the published version. However, this year CEO Sam Altman has spoken about focusing the company on enterprise deployment and cut back on technology projects and experiments seen as distracting from that goal.

Another OpenAI Executive, Denise Dresser, Departs the A.I. Start-Up

Sign up for the On Tech newsletter. Get our best tech reporting from the week. Get it sent to your inbox. OpenAI has replaced its chief revenue officer just eight months after she started with the company, the latest in a string of executive changes at the high-flying artificial intelligence start-up. The company said on Thursday that Denise Dresser, who was hired last December to help build OpenAI's enterprise business, planned to leave the company "for other opportunities." Ms. Dresser is being replaced by Dali Rajic, the former president and chief operating officer of Wiz, a cybersecurity firm acquired by Google last year. "Denise has led our revenue organization through a formative period for the business and has worked tirelessly to get the team to where it is today," Greg Brockman, OpenAI's co-founder and president, said in a statement. "Dali will turn what we've learned into repeatable execution as we build out the full system to make A.I. broadly useful for people and businesses." Ms. Dresser confirmed that she planned to depart in the coming weeks in an internal note to OpenAI staff on Thursday morning, which she later shared publicly on LinkedIn. Ms. Dresser's exit adds to a list of notable departures at the top of OpenAI in recent months, even as the company eyes an initial public offering sometime next year. Earlier this week, Brad Lightcap, one of OpenAI's early employees and former chief operating officer, left the company after eight years. Kate Rouch, the chief marketing officer, departed in April to focus on cancer recovery; Kevin Weil, who oversaw science research, left the same month. And Fidji Simo, a top executive who worked to transform the company's business, left for health reasons in July. The changes also come as Mr. Brockman takes tighter control of the business in the wake of Ms. Simo's departure. Mr. Brockman, who is known for being a hard charger and highly competitive, tapped Mr. Rajic to expand OpenAI's enterprise business, which the company sees as crucial to catch up with Anthropic, its main competitor. Anthropic is considering an initial public offering as soon as this year. It has a head start with big business customers. Anthropic's revenue run-rate -- an extrapolation of projected annual revenue, based on a month's financial performance -- was in the single-digit billions at the end of last year. In a matter of months, that number increased into the tens of billions, bolstered by the company's software coding tool, Claude Code. While Claude Code's business dwarfs OpenAI's offering, called Codex, OpenAI's run-rate revenue from business customers in July increased 32 percent from the previous month, driven largely by big customers, The New York Times previously reported. (The Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)

OpenAI revenue chief quits after less than a year By Investing.com

Investing.com -- OpenAI announced Thursday that Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser is leaving the artificial intelligence company less than a year after joining, marking another senior departure as the firm prepares for its initial public offering. The company said Dresser is leaving "to pursue other opportunities." OpenAI hired Dali Rajic, former president and chief operating officer of cybersecurity firm Wiz, as her replacement. "The opportunity to work hands-on with the most transformative technology in the world has been nothing short of incredible," Dresser wrote in a LinkedIn post Thursday. "I am so proud of what we have accomplished and, even more, of how this team has shown up for our customers and one another." Get instant alerts on market-moving headlines on InvestingPro -- now 55% off. Dresser joined OpenAI in December after spending more than a decade as an executive at Salesforce. She took over many responsibilities from Brad Lightcap in April when he moved to a role focused on special projects. Lightcap announced his departure Tuesday, stating on X that he plans to "start something new." He spent eight years at OpenAI and worked closely with CEO Sam Altman. Fidji Simo, OpenAI's product and business chief, stepped down last month to focus on recovery from a severe exacerbation of a chronic illness. Three additional executives left the company in April. The departures occur as OpenAI prepares for its public market debut. The company filed its IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission confidentially in June. OpenAI completed a funding round in March at an $852 billion valuation.