OpenAI wants enterprise software's customers and all its top talent

Senior executives are walking out the door at some of the biggest names in enterprise software, heading straight to the AI companies that are already hammering their former employers’ stock prices. The double blow of collapsing valuations and a leadership drain has left the sector in a position few saw coming just a year ago.

OpenAI and Anthropic have recently recruited top talent from Salesforce, Snowflake, and Datadog, offering large pay packages and the chance to carry their existing business relationships into a new role. Salesforce and OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment.

Denise Dresser was one of the most prominent hires. He was the CEO of Slack under Salesforce and has since taken the chief revenue officer job at OpenAI. Jennifer Majlessi, another Salesforce veteran, recently announced on LinkedIn that she was joining OpenAI as head of go-to-market.

“What makes this opportunity especially meaningful is my genuine belief in the product. I’ve seen how useful this technology can be in both work and life,” she wrote. Anthropic has also pulled talent from Salesforce, according to a person with knowledge of the hires.

Two separate sources told CNBC that OpenAI has also been quietly recruiting forward-deployed engineers from Palantir, a role considered among the most specialized in the industry, involving hands-on work helping clients overhaul their operations using software tools.

The new talent war is not about researchers anymore

The talent rush used to be about scientists. Labs competed for researchers with multimillion-dollar salaries and signing bonuses worth tens of millions. That battle has not gone away, but a new one has opened up.

As of January, upto 40% of OpenAI’s business is generated through enterprise clients. It will reach 50% by year’s end, as per Sarah Friar, CFO at the firm.

In November, OpenAI said it has over 1 million business customers around the world. It shows OpenAI is not just looking for people who can build AI, as the company already knows it more than most. But it still requires people who can attract the biggest companies in the world and who already have a foot in the door.

For the companies losing these executives, the timing could not be worse. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF, which tracks the software sector, is down nearly 20% this year. AI fear is making investors pull out investments from traditional software names.

Stocks fell as OpenAI moved to replace, not just compete

It’s not only stock prices that are concerning. It’s how OpenAI has made moves that show it doesn’t want to work within the software industry; it aims to simply replace it.

In February, the company launched Frontier, a system made to create and run autonomous agents that can function across software, handle data and perform difficult business tasks without any need for a human supervisor. Another such name is an agent called Operator, which handles office work through different applications.

The Frontier Alliances program partnerships with McKinsey, BCG and Accenture, was announced for practices to take over entire departments of big companies with the use of AI agents

Markets took a sharp downturn. ServiceNow fell more than 20% in the year to that point, with a further drop of 4.39% on February 23 alone. Palantir has been down roughly 25% since January. CrowdStrike fell 9.37% on the same day.

ServiceNow’s chief executive Bill McDermott went as far as using his own money to buy back shares. Palantir and CrowdStrike said AI agents can’t survive without the infrastructure and governance their companies provide.

Some employees at software firms are not waiting to find out who is right. Oracle this month began laying off thousands of workers as it shifted resources toward AI cloud computing. Meta and Microsoft have also cut headcount in recent weeks.

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