[Into the World of AI] Leadership Shake-Up for a Fresh Start... AI Big Tech Races Ahead Toward IPO

OpenAI Replaces Executive After Just 8 Months
Sales Performance Falls Short of Expectations

Global artificial intelligence (AI) companies preparing for initial public offerings (IPOs) are accelerating efforts to secure profitability and expand investments. This is because addressing the challenge of monetizing AI and boosting corporate value for fundraising have emerged as key priorities ahead of their IPOs.

According to the IT industry on August 15, OpenAI announced on August 13 (local time) that it has appointed Dalit Radzik, formerly President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the cloud security company Wiz, as its new Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). The newly appointed CRO Radzik is a veteran with experience leading sales organizations at major IT firms.

With Radzik taking on the role of CRO, the previous CRO, Denise Dresser, will leave OpenAI. This comes just eight months after she joined OpenAI in December last year. She is a former CEO of Slack, the business collaboration tool subsidiary under Salesforce.

OpenAI explained, "Denise has decided to leave OpenAI after a transition period to pursue new opportunities." Dresser, in an internal memo released through her LinkedIn account, stated, "Following discussions about the company’s future needs, I am working with President Greg Brockman to ensure a smooth transition."

Regarding the CRO change, President Brockman stated, "The way technology is being adopted is rapidly changing," and added, "We will transform the experience we have accumulated into repeatable execution so that Dalit can ensure AI is broadly useful to people and businesses."

The decision to replace a senior executive at OpenAI in less than a year suggests that sales performance has fallen short of expectations. It is known that OpenAI has a higher proportion of individual customers compared to corporate clients. This is in sharp contrast to rival AI companies such as Anthropic, which focus mainly on corporate customers. Corporate clients tend to enter into large-scale, long-term contracts, contributing more to revenue than individual customers.

For this reason, OpenAI, which needs to enhance its corporate value ahead of its IPO, is actively working to increase sales to corporate customers. OpenAI submitted a confidential IPO filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in June and is proceeding with the listing process. OpenAI has repeatedly stated its goal of increasing revenue from corporate customers by the end of this year, aiming to match the revenue generated from individual customers.

Similarly, Anthropic, which also submitted an IPO application in June, is making preparations for its own listing. According to U.S. business channel CNBC and other local media, Anthropic is holding meetings with potential investors. In these preliminary discussions, topics such as Anthropic's Claude series of AI models, its market position, management team, and the number of its products and services are being addressed. However, it is reported that full-scale discussions on corporate valuation or financial information have not yet taken place.

In the investment round concluded at the end of May, Anthropic was valued at $965 billion (approximately KRW 1,368 trillion). This surpasses OpenAI, which was valued at $852 billion (approximately KRW 1,208 trillion) as of the end of March.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.