Slack's CEO is joining OpenAI to find the money to pay for all those data centers

"OpenAI has announced that Denise Dresser, the current CEO of Slack, will be the company's new Chief Revenue Officer. Dresser will oversee the company's revenue strategy "across enterprise and customer success," according to OpenAI's announcement, and will presumably play a key role in leading the company towards profitability now that it's reorganized as a public benefit corporation. "We're on a path to put AI tools into the hands of millions of workers, across every industry," Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of Products said in the announcement."

"Simo joined OpenAI in May of this year, after serving as CEO of Instacart, and before that, the head of Facebook at Meta. Hiring Simo and Dresser could be a good indication of how OpenAI plans to approach ChatGPT going forward. Which is to say, the company is taking a very Silicon Valley approach to growing its chatbot business and focusing on scale and monetizing as many AI interactions as possible. It's not a mistake that Simo helped establish Meta's ads business and OpenAI is reportedly planning to introduce ads into chats with its AI models."

"Even with the possibility of ad revenue, Dresser will still have to overcome what OpenAI continues to spend to offer its various AI products. OpenAI pays for multiple partnerships for data center access and has commitments to both buy and build server components for those data centers. Add in the cost of just processing a ChatGPT query itself, and growing the company's revenue seems like a tall order."

OpenAI has hired Denise Dresser, the current CEO of Slack, as Chief Revenue Officer to oversee revenue strategy across enterprise and customer success. She will help lead the company toward profitability after its reorganization as a public benefit corporation. OpenAI emphasizes scaling AI tools for millions of workers and plans product and monetization moves that echo Silicon Valley ad-driven strategies. Fidji Simo joined earlier from Instacart and Meta, and her hiring alongside Dresser signals prioritizing product growth and monetization. The company faces substantial costs from data center partnerships, server commitments, and per-query processing, making revenue growth challenging.

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