OpenAI talent exodus raises 'huge red flag' ahead of IPO

26 pointsposted a day ago
by pseudolus

3 Comments

__natty__

19 hours ago

Reading all this news makes me feel like some soap opera play is happening at AI companies regarding IPO. Their scale is outside of comprehension of typical Joe like me

dude250711

a day ago

If even C-types are now considered "talent" and a few of them leaving is an "exodus" then what had happened at Google in comparison - extinction?

alephnerd

21 hours ago

Also, if you have the option to hire Dali Radjic (Wiz, Zscaler, AppDynamics) for a CRO position you take it.

Denise and Fidji's backgrounds are in productivity SaaS (Slack) and B2C+B2B2C (Instacart) respectively, which require a different GTM and sales motion from an infra play which is what foundation model vendors have become.

Same with Brad Lightcap, who doesn't have experience managing an org at OpenAI's scale and size, as before OpenAI he was part of YC's investing team and did standard CorpFinance and IB work.

What OpenAI is signaling is that they are making a hard shift away from productivity tooling and B2C towards concentrating on being an Platform, Infra, and Enterprise SaaS play - which honestly is the right move because foundation models have become the new hyperscalers and datalakes.