OpenAI chief revenue officer Denise Dresser is leaving the company after joining the AI giant last year.
The exit comes as OpenAI aggressively tries to turn on ads within its popular ChatGPT answer engine as a source of revenue.
“During a formative period for both OpenAI and the enterprise AI market, she built the team, strengthened relationships with major customers, and established the commercial foundation that has brought our business to this point,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post about Dresser’s exit.
Dresser will leave OpenAI “to pursue other opportunities” following a transition period. “We’re deeply grateful for her leadership and everything she’s done for OpenAI,” the blog post continued.
OpenAI has appointed Dali Rajic to fill Dresser’s role, overseeing its global revenue team. Rajic was previously president and chief operating officer at Google-owned cybersecurity firm Wiz.
Executive revolving doors
Dresser’s departure is the second major executive exit at OpenAI recently.
On Aug. 11, longtime chief operating officer Brad Lightcap announced that he was leaving the company after eight years. At the time, OpenAI said that Dresser would absorb Lightcap’s responsibilities.
Before joining OpenAI in December, Dresser was CEO of Slack and is a former longtime Salesforce executive. From 2022 to 2023, she was a member of the Ad Council’s board of directors.
The exits come at a pivotal time for OpenAI’s advertising efforts.
On Aug. 11, OpenAI launched its advertising business internationally in the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea. OpenAI is also courting small to midsize advertisers, a group that represents Meta, Google, and Amazon’s core advertisers.
In recent months, OpenAI has expanded its partnerships with adtech companies, indicative of a maturing ad marketplace. Forty brands including Grubhub and other performance-focused advertisers are testing an integration with AppsFlyer that helps measure the performance of ChatGPT ads, ADWEEK previously reported.
