From hiring the creator of OpenClaw and ServiceNow’s global CMO, OpenAI is making a serious push into enterprise boardrooms by hiring top talent from the world’s largest tech companies. Here are five big OpenAI hires this year solution providers need to know about.
OpenAI is striving for a seat at the enterprise boardroom table as the AI company hires a slew of top-notch and renowned executives from many of the biggest technology companies in the world.
This includes nabbing ServiceNow’s global CMO; a prominent AI researcher who led Meta’s Superintelligence Labs; Google Cloud’s worldwide partner programs leader; as well as the creator of the popular personal AI agent OpenClaw.
The San Francisco-based AI star is revamping its enterprise strategy around distribution as well as custom enterprise-grade AI models and AI agents that sit on top of systems, including forming blockbuster partnerships over the past 12 months with enterprise leaders including Amazon Web Services, Dell Technologies and Nvidia.
[Related: Google Cloud-IBM Team For Multibillion-Dollar AI Agent Gemini Enterprise Push]
OpenAI’s Hiring And Enterprise Business Push
Ethan Simmons, CEO of Norwood, Mass.-based solution provider PTP, said OpenAI’s hiring and technical strategy to become a more prominent enterprise business player can help channel partners.
“There’s a lot of excitement in the market from a cloud marketplace standpoint of being able to partner with OpenAI frontier models through something like AWS Marketplace and be able to transact that way,” said Simmons. “I think you’ll see more marketplace-type transactions that leverage those OpenAI models on the AWS Marketplace.
“We follow OpenAI from a technology standpoint and where their models work well to meet our customer business needs. But we haven’t yet really looked at them as another channel partner relationship at this point,” Simmons said. “I’m not saying we won’t if the opportunity arises.”
As OpenAI seeks to build a strong business-facing brand, CRN breaks down five of the biggest hires from OpenAI in 2026 that solution providers and customers need to know about.
Colin Fleming
Former Position: EVP, CMO, ServiceNow
OpenAI Position: CMO, Business
OpenAI hired ServiceNow CMO Fleming to lead the company’s business marketing as OpenAI strives to become a more global technology and services firm.
“Some companies build great products. A few change what people believe is possible. OpenAI is one of those companies,” said Fleming in a LinkedIn post last month.
At OpenAI, Fleming’s goal is to translate and drive the company’s advanced research and product vision into the enterprise business world.
“For businesses, that is a massive shift. Ideas do not have to sit around waiting for permission, budget, head count or a six-month road map,” he said. “Teams can move faster. Companies can learn faster. Customers can experience value faster.”
Fleming spent two years at ServiceNow as its global CMO and executive vice president.
Prior to ServiceNow, he spent 13 years at Salesforce where he served as executive vice president of global marketing. He was critical in evolving the company’s narrative beyond CRM into a broader cloud and platform company.
Ruoming Pang
Former Position: AI Research Scientist, Head Of Meta Superintelligence Labs, Meta
OpenAI Position: AI Model Leader, Technical Staff
Pang is a prominent AI researcher who was hired by Meta last year with a pay package reportedly worth over $200 million.
However, after joining Meta’s Superintelligence Labs in July 2025, he left in February to join OpenAI.
Pang will work on AI foundation models and superintelligence research at OpenAI, although he doesn’t have an official title.
Pang has decades of experience working at companies including Google DeepMind, Apple and Meta in top AI roles.
At Meta, Pang oversaw AI infrastructure for the Meta Superintelligence Labs, which develops the company’s next generation of AI models.
Prior to Meta, Pang spent four years as a senior distinguished engineer at Apple, leading the development of the foundation models behind Apple Intelligence. This included research and development of the AXLearn training framework, pre-training, post-training, inference optimization of LLMs, and multimodal understanding and generation capabilities.
Pang spent the majority of his career as a principal software engineer at Google from 2006 until joining Apple in 2021. He led Google Brain’s speech recognition research and product engagement, as well as co-founded Google’s global consistent authorization system Zanzibar in 2012.
The Google Brain division that Pang helped lead merged with Google DeepMind in 2023.
Peter Steinberger
Former Position: Creator, Founder, OpenClaw
OpenAI Position: AI Agent Leader, Technical Staff
Steinberger, the creator and founder of the popular personal AI agent OpenClaw, joined OpenAI this year.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X that Steinberger will “drive the next generation of personal agents” while committing support to OpenClaw.
“He is a genius with a lot of amazing ideas about the future of very smart agents interacting with each other to do very useful things for people,” Altman wrote. “We expect this will quickly become core to our product offerings.”
Steinberger, for his part, said he joined OpenAI “to work on bringing agents to everyone,”
“My next mission [at OpenAI] is to build an agent that even my mum can use,” Steinberger wrote in a message to employees about his departure. “That’ll need a much broader change, a lot more thought on how to do it safely, and access to the very latest models and research.”
Steinberger is the developer behind OpenClaw, formerly known as Clawdbot and Moltbot, which is an open-source agentic website that allows users to build agents and bots that control apps, including on desktops and personal machines.
Steinberger has yet to be given an official title at OpenAI, while his LinkedIn profile simply saying “Member of Technical Staff.”
Denise Dresser
Former Position: CEO, Slack, a Salesforce company
OpenAI Position: CRO
Dresser, Slack’s former CEO, was hired by OpenAI as its new CRO. She is tasked with overseeing OpenAI’s global revenue strategy across enterprises and customer success.
“I’ve spent my career helping scale category-defining platforms, and I’m looking forward to bringing that experience to OpenAI as it enters its next phase of enterprise transformation,” Dresser said in a statement.
At Slack, she led the company through its integration with Salesforce and helped redefine how millions of users use AI to work more efficiently and stay better connected.
Prior to Slack, she spent over a decade at Salesforce building and leading global sales organizations, serving some of the company’s largest customers in roles such as president and executive vice president.
Colleen Kapase
Former Position: VP Channel, Global Head Of Partner Programs, Google Cloud
OpenAI Position: VP, Strategic Global Partnerships, Ecosystems
Kapase, Google Cloud’s former global head of partner programs, joined OpenAI as the company dips its toe in the channel this year.
Kapase was a beloved Google channel leader who was key to the development of Google Cloud’s new Google Cloud Partner Network partner program. She is a longtime channel executive, having worked in top partner and ecosystem roles at Snowflake, VMware and Citrix.
Kapase joined OpenAI in a familiar partner executive position as vice president of strategic global partnerships and ecosystems.
“ChatGPT took the world by storm and opened possibilities to inspire humanity to do things differently. OpenAI’s footprint quickly expanded to enterprise customers who are already realizing significant outcomes,” Kapase said in an April LinkedIn post. “But this ball game is in the early innings and OpenAI, together with our partners, [will have a monumental] future impact on joint customers.”
