OpenAI is coming for those sweet enterprise dollars in 2026

OpenAI has reorganized a few of its management and picked a well-known face to guide its push into promoting AI to enterprise prospects as the corporate seems to catch as much as its rivals in 2026.

The corporate appointed Barret Zoph to guide its efforts to promote its AI to enterprises, in keeping with reporting from The Data, citing an inner OpenAI memo.

Trendster reached out to OpenAI for affirmation and extra info.

Zoph returned to OpenAI final week after leaving Considering Machine Labs, former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s AI startup the place Zoph had served as a co-founder and CTO since October 2024.

The precise circumstances of his departure aren’t clear, with rumors swirling about whether or not Zoph and some different former OpenAI workers had been fired or left on their very own accord, presumably with plans to return to OpenAI all alongside.

Zoph was beforehand the vice chairman of post-training inference at OpenAI from September 2022 to October 2024. He’s entering into a really completely different place and can doubtless play an vital position on the firm because it seems to develop its enterprise enterprise — an space the place it’s dropping floor to rivals.

OpenAI launched its enterprise-focused ChatGPT Enterprise product in 2023 greater than a 12 months earlier than Anthropic and a number of years earlier than Google launched its enterprise choices. The corporate claims the product has greater than 5 million enterprise customers and counts firms together with SoftBank, Goal, and Lowe’s as prospects.

However its market share is falling whereas its rivals are climbing.

Anthropic holds a dominant lead over its AI rivals relating to enterprise massive language mannequin utilization. The AI analysis lab holds a 40% market share, in keeping with a December report from VC agency Menlo Ventures (which, it ought to be famous, has invested aggressively in Anthropic). In July, the startup’s market share was estimated to be 32%.

Google’s Gemini adoption has been steadier, in keeping with Menlo Ventures. The corporate launched its enterprise product final fall and has seen its enterprise LLM utilization market share largely keep the identical, per Menlo’s findings, rising from 20% in July to 21% on the finish of the 12 months.

OpenAI however has seen its utilization market share drop from 50% in 2023 to 27% on the finish of 2025 — a pattern that seems to concern the corporate. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expressed concern particularly that Google Gemini’s progress was beginning to encroach on OpenAI in an inner memo just a few months in the past.

Enterprise progress is an space of focus for the corporate in 2026, OpenAI’s CFO Sarah Friar wrote in a weblog publish this previous Sunday.

The corporate has since introduced an expanded multi-year partnership with ServiceNow that may give ServiceNow prospects entry to OpenAI fashions.