OpenAI is coming for those sweet enterprise dollars in 2026

OpenAI has reshuffled parts of its leadership team and tapped a familiar executive to spearhead its renewed push into selling artificial intelligence to large business customers, as the company looks to regain momentum in the enterprise market heading into 2026.

The company has appointed Barret Zoph to lead its enterprise sales efforts, according to a report from The Information citing an internal OpenAI memo.

Zoph rejoined OpenAI last week after departing Thinking Machine Labs, the artificial intelligence startup founded by former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati. Zoph had served as a co-founder and CTO at Thinking Machine Labs since October 2024.

The circumstances surrounding Zoph’s exit from the startup remain unclear. In recent weeks, speculation has circulated over whether Zoph and several other former OpenAI employees were dismissed or left voluntarily, potentially with plans to return to OpenAI from the outset.

Before joining Thinking Machine Labs, Zoph was OpenAI’s vice president of post-training inference from September 2022 through October 2024. His new role represents a significant shift in responsibilities. It pplaces himat the centre of OpenAI’s effort to strengthen its enterprise business — an area where the company has been losing ground to competitors.

OpenAI launched ChatGPT Enterprise in 2023, more than a year ahead of similar offerings from Anthropic and several years before Google introduced its own enterprise AI tools. OpenAI has said ChatGPT Enterprise has attracted more than 5 million business users and lists companies such as SoftBank, Target, and Lowe’s among its customers.

Despite that early lead, OpenAI’s position in the enterprise market has weakened as rivals gain traction.

Anthropic now holds a commanding lead in enterprise large language model usage, according to a December report from Menlo Ventures. The firm estimated Anthropic’s enterprise market share at 40%, up from 32% in July. Menlo Ventures has invested heavily in Anthropic, a detail it disclosed in the report.

Adoption of Google’s Gemini has been steadier, based on the same data. Google launched its enterprise AI product last fall, and Menlo Ventures found that Gemini’s enterprise usage market share edged up slightly, from 20% in July to 21% by the end of the year.

OpenAI, by contrast, has seen its enterprise usage market share fall sharply — from 50% in 2023 to 27% by the end of 2025. That decline appears to have raised concerns internally. Sam Altman warned in an internal memo several months ago that Gemini’s growth was beginning to encroach on OpenAI’s position with business customers.

Enterprise expansion is set to be a significant priority for OpenAI in 2026. Sarah Friar, the company’s chief financial officer, highlighted enterprise growth as a key focus area in a blog post published on Sunday.

As part of that push, OpenAI recently announced an expanded multi-year partnership with ServiceNow, which will give ServiceNow’s customers broader access to OpenAI’s models — a move aimed at embedding OpenAI’s technology deeper into corporate workflows.