AI talent war: Software industry is a new target as top executives jump ship to OpenAI

the ai talent war has a new front: software executives, not just researchers. openai and anthropic have poached top sales and go-to-market leaders from salesforce, snowflake, and datadog, luring them with big compensation and the chance to bring corporate relationships. denise dresser, formerly ceo of slack within salesforce, is now openai's chief revenue officer. jennifer majlessi left salesforce last month to lead go-to-market at openai. anthropic has also hired from salesforce. the enterprise segment is now roughly 40% of openai's business, and cfo sarah friar says they're on track to hit 50% by year-end. openai announced over 1 million business customers in november. for software companies, this is another headwind on top of a brutal year. the igv software etf is down almost 20% this year on fears ai will upend the cloud subscription model. oracle laid off thousands this month. some employees are jumping before layoffs hit. one source noted the cultural fit isn't always there — some executives lack the drive for long hours at fast-growing ai companies.