OpenAI Hires Slack CEO as First Chief Revenue Officer

OpenAI has appointed Slack CEO Denise Dresser as its first chief revenue officer, signaling the ChatGPT maker’s push to convert its massive user base into sustainable enterprise revenue.

Dresser will oversee OpenAI’s global revenue strategy across enterprise sales and customer success, the company announced Tuesday. She will report to COO Brad Lightcap and is expected to start next week.

The hire comes as OpenAI serves more than one million business customers globally, including Walmart, Morgan Stanley, Intuit, Databricks, Target, and Lowe’s. With 800 million weekly users on ChatGPT, the company faces a fundamental challenge: turning free usage into paid subscriptions and enterprise contracts.

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

Salesforce Pedigree

Dresser spent more than a decade at Salesforce building and leading global sales organizations serving some of the company’s largest and most complex customers. She became Slack CEO in 2023, guiding the workplace messaging platform through its integration with Salesforce and its push to embed AI features throughout the product.

Her background in enterprise software sales addresses a gap in OpenAI’s leadership. While the company has excelled at building consumer products and generating research breakthroughs, monetizing those capabilities at enterprise scale requires different expertise.

“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.

Rob Seaman, Slack’s chief product officer, will step in as interim CEO at Slack.

Enterprise Revenue Pressure

The appointment reflects the economic reality facing OpenAI. The Information recently reported that the company generated around $4.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2025, about 16% more than all of 2024. But the company’s infrastructure costs remain enormous, and its recent $500 billion valuation demands continued growth.

OpenAI claims that 75% of workers using its AI tools for business report improved speed or quality, with many saving 40 to 60 minutes per day. Heavy users report saving more than 10 hours weekly. Translating those productivity gains into recurring enterprise contracts is now Dresser’s mandate.

The hire also positions OpenAI to compete more directly with Anthropic, which has aggressively targeted enterprise customers through its Claude platform. Microsoft’s Copilot products and Google’s Gemini for Workspace represent additional competition for corporate AI spending.

Product Expansion Demands Sales Infrastructure

OpenAI has rapidly expanded beyond ChatGPT into products that require enterprise sales motions. The company launched its Atlas browser in October with agent capabilities that let AI perform multi-step tasks autonomously. Its API business serves developers building AI agents and custom applications.

These products often require consultative sales, implementation support, and ongoing customer success management—functions that Dresser built at Salesforce and refined at Slack.

The timing suggests OpenAI is preparing for its next growth phase. After three years of consumer adoption, the company appears to be shifting focus toward the enterprise contracts that could sustain its infrastructure investments and justify its valuation.

For Slack, the departure creates uncertainty at a moment when the platform faces its own competitive pressures from Microsoft Teams and emerging AI-native collaboration tools. Whether Seaman’s interim leadership extends or Salesforce recruits a permanent replacement will likely depend on how the parent company views Slack’s strategic importance.

Dresser’s move from running a $1.5 billion revenue business at Slack to building OpenAI’s enterprise operation represents one of the most significant executive transitions in the AI industry this year. Her success or failure will help determine whether OpenAI can translate its technological leadership into the commercial dominance its investors expect.