^{Photo: Bloomberg.com}

OpenAI has appointed former Slack chief executive Denise Dresser as its new chief revenue officer, a move that underscores the company’s push to accelerate enterprise adoption as generative artificial intelligence becomes a defining technology for global business operations. Dresser will now oversee OpenAI’s worldwide revenue strategy, leading both customer success and enterprise commercial teams as the company enters a high-growth chapter marked by rapid scale, rising costs and escalating competition.

Dresser’s appointment follows a long career in enterprise software. She spent more than ten years at Salesforce, where she held senior leadership roles in customer success and platform growth. In 2023 she took the helm at Slack, three years after Salesforce acquired the workplace messaging platform for over 27 billion dollars. Her track record of scaling modern software ecosystems positions her as a strategic addition at a moment when OpenAI is transforming from a research-driven organization into one of the most commercially influential technology companies in the world.

OpenAI catalyzed the generative AI revolution with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. Since then the company’s commercial footprint has expanded at unprecedented speed, with more than 800 million weekly active users and over one million enterprises relying on OpenAI products. In November the firm reported that it is on pace to surpass 20 billion dollars in annualized revenue this year, with long term projections estimating potential growth into the hundreds of billions by the end of the decade. To support this trajectory, OpenAI has committed more than 1.4 trillion dollars in infrastructure investments tied to advanced compute, energy capacity and new global data centers.

However, the path ahead is competitive. Rivals such as Google and Anthropic are allocating billions to model development, cloud infrastructure and enterprise distribution. Analysts note that as the AI industry matures, the companies with the strongest commercial execution and most extensive enterprise integrations will define the next era of market leadership. With organizations increasingly seeking full stack AI solutions, OpenAI aims to expand its footprint across sectors including finance, retail, healthcare, manufacturing and logistics.

In its announcement, OpenAI emphasized Dresser’s ability to guide companies through platform transitions and large scale technology adoption. Her mandate will focus on deepening enterprise partnerships, strengthening customer success operations, and helping companies integrate AI into daily workflows—from automation and analytics to product development and internal operations. According to OpenAI’s leadership, the objective is to establish AI as a foundational tool for millions of workers worldwide.

OpenAI’s CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo, described Dresser as a leader uniquely positioned to drive this shift, noting that her experience executing global operational change will support the company’s mission to make AI reliable, practical and widely accessible for businesses. With organizations worldwide ramping up AI investments, Dresser’s role is expected to shape how OpenAI translates its technical breakthroughs into long term commercial dominance.