OpenAI has appointed Dali Rajic, president and chief operating officer of Alphabet Inc.-owned cybersecurity firm Wiz, as its new chief revenue officer. According to reports from Business Standard, Bloomberg, and Bloomberg Law, Rajic succeeds Denise Dresser, the former chief executive officer of Slack, who was hired for the CRO role at OpenAI in December but was replaced after just eight months on the job. Dresser will leave OpenAI to pursue other opportunities following a transition period. As reported by CNBC, Rajic brings extensive cybersecurity experience, having served as president and COO of Wiz since February 2024, where he helped the Israeli cybersecurity company grow rapidly by selling products to large organizations and technical customers. Before Wiz, he served as president and COO of Zscaler and as chief customer and revenue officer at AppDynamics. Notably, Wiz was acquired by Google for $32 billion this year in the tech giant's largest-ever acquisition, highlighting Rajic's track record in successful cybersecurity companies.
The appointment represents one of the first key executive appointments from OpenAI President Greg Brockman in his newly expanded leadership position overseeing more of the firm's business after Fidji Simo's departure. As reported by CNBC, Brockman acknowledged the recent departures, stating that "the difference between OpenAI and other organizations is that we are so much in the spotlight, so every departure gets scrutinized in a way that it doesn't otherwise." The move comes as part of a broader shake-up in the organization in the last month, which has seen the departures of COO Brad Lightcap and the company's No. 2 executive, CEO of AGI deployment Fidji Simo. The timing of this change is particularly significant as OpenAI approaches a potentially transformative period, preparing for a public offering and seeking to turn the extraordinary popularity of ChatGPT into a durable enterprise business.
According to the company's internal note reported by Business Standard and Bloomberg, OpenAI's annual revenue run rate increased more than 20% month-over-month in July, with 32% growth for business customers. The company has now reached a significant milestone with more than one billion weekly active users and more than two million businesses, with the number of businesses having doubled over the past year. OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said in January that enterprises represented about 40% of the company's business at the time. In April, Dresser told CNBC that OpenAI's enterprise business was on track to reach a target of accounting for roughly 50% of the company's business by the end of the year. However, despite the incredible growth and its powerful models, executives have suggested both privately and publicly that the company hasn't hit all of its revenue goals. The company says it has filed confidentially with the SEC ahead of a potential IPO, but it's not clear when that will take place.
OpenAI is significantly expanding its computing infrastructure capabilities with a major data center project in Ohio. As reported by CNBC, Nvidia has agreed to provide substantial financial backing for an OpenAI data center being developed by SB Energy in Ohio. Nvidia will invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy and provide guarantees connected to the development, while OpenAI will lease the facility. The project is expected to provide 8 gigawatts of computing capacity once fully developed, with the first phase expected to come online from 2028. This infrastructure expansion illustrates how OpenAI's growth increasingly depends on vast amounts of electricity, specialized chips, and physical infrastructure, supporting the company's ambitions to serve enterprise customers and prepare for its public listing.
OpenAI is confronting growing security risks associated with increasingly capable AI systems. The company disclosed in July that its models had been involved in what it described as an "unprecedented cyber incident." As reported by CNBC, Brockman said OpenAI was taking the matter seriously and had sought to share lessons from the episode with other organizations. "We need to point out what we see coming, and sometimes that's positive, and sometimes that's mitigation of risks," Brockman stated. The company has also been trying to increase the share of its business coming from corporate customers, putting it into increasingly direct competition with Anthropic. Last month, OpenAI said it had topped 1 billion weekly active users, less than four years after the viral success of its ChatGPT chatbot kicked off the AI boom. Rajic expressed enthusiasm about joining OpenAI, stating that "OpenAI has extraordinary technology, products that more than one billion people already love, and enormous market pull."
