OpenAI hires Dali Rajic, COO of Alphabet's Wiz, as chief revenue officer, replacing ex-Slack CEO Denise Dresser, who was hired in December 2025 and will leave
OpenAI is naming its second new chief revenue officer in less than a year, a sign of efforts to bolster sales growth ahead of a highly anticipated Wall Street debut.
Context & Ripple Effects
Dresser joined OpenAI as chief revenue officer only in December, after leaving Slack in the related coverage. Her subsequent account that Microsoft deal terms limited access to Bedrock customers and the company’s Amazon agreement put distribution constraints at the center of the revenue brief.
The leadership change follows OpenAI’s decision to add a dedicated ad-sales leader, hiring Dave Dugan from Meta to report to COO Brad Lightcap. Rajic takes over the broader revenue role as OpenAI seeks stronger sales growth ahead of its anticipated market debut.
First-order effects
- Dali Rajic becomes OpenAI’s second chief revenue officer in less than a year, replacing Dresser and taking charge of the sales-growth mandate described in the report.
- Dresser’s departure ends a short tenure that included negotiating revenue routes beyond the Microsoft relationship, including the Amazon deal she cited internally.
Second-order effects
- OpenAI’s enterprise-sales organization must absorb another top-level transition while its ad-sales operation remains separately led by Dugan under Lightcap.
- Rajic inherits a commercial model in which cloud-partner access affects which enterprise customers OpenAI can reach, making channel execution a central revenue priority rather than a back-office constraint.
Third-order effects
- Repeated senior commercial hires point to OpenAI building a more specialized go-to-market structure, separating broad revenue leadership from ad sales as it prepares for greater public-market scrutiny.
- If partner constraints continue to shape enterprise access, AI companies’ revenue leadership will increasingly be judged on distribution agreements as well as direct sales execution.
The trend: Leading AI labs are professionalizing commercialization with specialized executives for enterprise channels, advertising, and finance ahead of larger-scale capital-market ambitions.