Another leadership shake-up at OpenAI: Denise Dresser departs, Dali Rajic takes over

Denise Dresser, who has held the role of CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) at OpenAI, is stepping down. She had joined the company just last year.

Her departure comes as OpenAI is actively rolling out advertising through ChatGPT's response system — a move the company sees as a new revenue stream.

In its blog post about Dresser's departure, OpenAI wrote: "During a formative period for OpenAI and the enterprise AI market, she built the team, deepened relationships with major customers, and laid the commercial foundation that brought our business to where it is today." After a transition period, Dresser will leave to "pursue other opportunities"; the blog post also expressed deep gratitude for her leadership and everything she did for OpenAI.

Dali Rajic has been named to the CRO role in Dresser's place, and will lead the global revenue team. Rajic previously served as president and COO of Wiz, the cybersecurity company owned by Google.

This is already the second major leadership change at OpenAI recently. On August 11, the company's longtime COO Brad Lightcap announced he was leaving after eight years; OpenAI said at the time that Dresser would take on his responsibilities. Dresser herself had been CEO of Slack before joining OpenAI in December, and spent many years in leadership roles at Salesforce before that; she also served on the Ad Council's board of directors in 2022–2023.

The leadership change comes at a pivotal moment for OpenAI's advertising push. On August 11, the company launched its ad business internationally — in the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea — while also beginning to court small and mid-sized businesses that currently advertise mainly through Meta, Google, and Amazon. In recent months, the company has expanded its adtech partnerships, a sign the ad market is maturing. Roughly 40 brands, including Grubhub, are testing an integration with AppsFlyer that helps measure the performance of ChatGPT ads.