OpenAI has reorganized its leadership and appointed a familiar executive to lead its push into the enterprise market, signaling a renewed urgency to regain ground against rivals that are steadily eating into its early advantage. With competitors like Anthropic and Google gaining momentum, OpenAI is positioning itself to treat corporate sales as its defining battleground in 2026.
Barret Zoph, a former vice president at OpenAI, has been appointed to lead the company’s efforts to sell AI products to business customers, according to an internal memo reported by The Information. Zoph returned to OpenAI last week after a stint as co-founder and CTO at Thinking Machine Labs, the AI startup led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati. His departure from the startup was surrounded by speculation, with unclear circumstances suggesting he may have left with plans to return. Regardless of the details, his reappearance at OpenAI comes at a moment when the company needs experienced leadership to steer its enterprise strategy.
Zoph previously led post-training inference at OpenAI from September 2022 through October 2024, a role that placed him at the center of the company’s technical development. His new role is markedly different, and likely more strategic: converting OpenAI’s technological prowess into sustainable enterprise revenue. This shift reflects a broader recognition inside the company that the enterprise market is no longer a secondary opportunity, but a core battleground where long-term success will be decided.
OpenAI’s enterprise ambitions began early, with the launch of ChatGPT Enterprise in 2023—well ahead of Anthropic and years before Google introduced its own enterprise offerings. The product has attracted millions of business users and notable clients such as SoftBank, Target, and Lowe’s. Yet despite early leadership, OpenAI’s share of enterprise AI usage has declined sharply. A December report from venture firm Menlo Ventures shows OpenAI’s enterprise market share falling from 50% in 2023 to 27% by the end of 2025. This drop indicates that the company’s early lead is eroding as rivals build stronger footholds in corporate environments.
Anthropic has surged into the lead, holding roughly 40% of enterprise LLM usage by December, up from 32% in July, while Google’s Gemini has maintained steady growth from 20% to 21% in the same period. These gains have reportedly raised concern inside OpenAI, with CEO Sam Altman reportedly warning that Gemini’s growth is beginning to encroach on OpenAI’s territory. This internal pressure is now driving the company to refocus on enterprise growth as a priority for 2026.
OpenAI’s renewed focus on enterprise expansion is now a declared priority for 2026. CFO Sarah Friar emphasized the importance of corporate growth in a blog post this past Sunday, signaling that the company’s next phase will be less about consumer excitement and more about building lasting business relationships. The timing of Zoph’s appointment aligns with this pivot, suggesting that OpenAI is trying to align its leadership with the demands of enterprise sales—an arena that requires not only cutting-edge models but also trust, integration support, and long-term contracts.
To support that effort, OpenAI recently announced an expanded multi-year partnership with ServiceNow, granting ServiceNow customers access to OpenAI models. The deal illustrates how OpenAI is increasingly relying on enterprise ecosystems and platform partnerships to maintain relevance in a market where competitors are aggressively courting the same corporate clients.
