OpenAI hires Slack CEO Denise Dresser to lead global revenue strategy

OpenAI on Tuesday announced that it’s tapped Slack CEO Denise Dresser as its chief revenue officer.

Dresser will oversee the artificial intelligence startup’s global revenue strategy across both customer success and enterprise, OpenAI said in a release.

After spending more than a decade as an executive at Salesforce, Dresser was named Slack’s chief executive in 2023. Salesforce acquired the messaging company for more than $27 billion in 2020.

“I’ve spent my career helping scale category-defining platforms, and I’m looking forward to bringing that experience to OpenAI as it enters its next phase of enterprise transformation,” Dresser said in a statement.

OpenAI kickstarted the generative AI boom with the launch of its chatbot ChatGPT three years ago, and it has quickly ballooned into one of the fastest-growing commercial entities on the planet.

The startup said in November that it is on track to reach more than $20 billion in annualized revenue run rate this year, with plans to grow to hundreds of billions in sales by 2030.

But as competition heats up from rivals like Google and Anthropic, OpenAI is facing pressure to deliver. The company has made more $1.4 trillion in infrastructure commitments as it works to scale up its technology, and the immense sum has raised eyebrows and sparked concerns about a potential AI bubble.

More than 800 million people use ChatGPT every week, and OpenAI supports more than 1 million business customers.

Dresser will help more companies integrate AI into their daily operations, OpenAI said.

“We’re on a path to put AI tools into the hands of millions of workers, across every industry,” Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of Applications said in a statement. “Denise has led that kind of shift before, and her experience will help us make AI useful, reliable and accessible for businesses everywhere.”

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