OpenAI Targets Enterprise Market with 2026 Strategy
▼ Summary
– OpenAI has appointed Barret Zoph to lead its enterprise AI sales efforts as part of a leadership reorganization to catch up to rivals in 2026.
– Zoph is a former OpenAI VP who recently returned after co-founding Mira Murati’s startup, and his exact departure from that role is unclear.
– Despite launching ChatGPT Enterprise early and having over 5 million business users, OpenAI’s enterprise market share has fallen from 50% in 2023 to 27% by end of 2025.
– Competitor Anthropic now holds a dominant 40% enterprise LLM market share, while Google’s Gemini has maintained steady growth in this sector.
– OpenAI’s leadership has expressed concern about this trend and is focusing on enterprise growth, recently announcing an expanded partnership with ServiceNow.
To strengthen its position in the competitive AI landscape, OpenAI has made a strategic leadership change aimed at accelerating its enterprise sales efforts. The company has appointed Barret Zoph to spearhead its push to sell artificial intelligence solutions to business customers. This move comes as part of a broader 2026 strategy to regain momentum in a corporate market where rivals are gaining significant ground.
Zoph is a familiar figure at OpenAI, having recently returned after a brief stint elsewhere. He previously served as the vice president of post-training inference from late 2022 until October 2024. He then left to become a co-founder and chief technology officer at Thinking Machine Labs, an AI startup launched by former OpenAI co-founder Mira Murati. His return to OpenAI last week, however, was shrouded in some ambiguity. Industry whispers suggest questions remain about whether his departure from the startup was voluntary or not, with speculation that a return to OpenAI might have been planned all along.
His new role is distinctly different from his previous technical position and is considered crucial for the company’s future. OpenAI is looking to grow its enterprise business, an area where it is currently losing market share to competitors like Anthropic and Google. Despite launching its flagship corporate product, ChatGPT Enterprise, in 2023, well ahead of its rivals, the company faces stiff competition. OpenAI reports that its enterprise product boasts over 5 million business users and includes major clients such as SoftBank, Target, and Lowe’s.
Nevertheless, recent data indicates a concerning trend for the AI pioneer. According to a December report from Menlo Ventures, Anthropic now commands a dominant 40% share of the enterprise large language model usage market, a significant jump from an estimated 32% just five months earlier. Google’s Gemini for enterprise, released last fall, has maintained a steadier presence, with its market share growing slightly from 20% to 21% over the same period.
In stark contrast, OpenAI’s own market share has seen a sharp decline. It has fallen from a commanding 50% in 2023 to just 27% by the end of 2025. This erosion appears to have raised internal alarms. CEO Sam Altman reportedly expressed concern in a recent internal memo about Google Gemini’s growth beginning to encroach on OpenAI’s territory. In a clear signal of its renewed focus, Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar emphasized that enterprise growth is a top priority for the company in 2026. As an early step in this renewed push, OpenAI has announced an expanded, multi-year partnership with ServiceNow to provide its models to ServiceNow’s customer base.
(Source: TechCrunch)
