Slack CEO Denise Dresser is leaving the company and joining OpenAI as the company’s chief revenue officer, multiple sources tell WIRED. Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, which owns Slack, shared news of Dresser’s departure in a message to staff on Monday evening.
At OpenAI, Dresser will manage the company’s enterprise unit, which has been growing rapidly this year. She will report to chief operating officer Brad Lightcap. She starts next week.
“We’re on a path to put AI tools into the hands of millions of workers, across every industry,” said OpenAI CEO of Applications Fidji Simo in a statement to WIRED. “Denise has led that kind of shift before, and her experience will help us make AI useful, reliable, and accessible for businesses everywhere.”
Dresser has been at Slack for 14 years, according to Benioff’s message. Prior to becoming CEO, she held a number of executive roles in Salesforce’s enterprise sales unit. She was appointed CEO in 2023, after the previous CEO, Lidiane Jones, departed for the chief executive role at Bumble. (Jones served as Slack’s CEO for about a year.)
The company that eventually became Slack was founded in 2009. By 2014 it had become a fast-growing application for workplace chat and collaboration tools. In 2021, the company was acquired by Salesforce for nearly $28 billion. Much of the founding staff of Slack, including cofounders Stewart Butterfield and Cal Henderson, left within a few years of the acquisition. Over time, some of Slack’s operations were absorbed into the larger structure of Salesforce, and there were reports of culture clashes between the employees of the once-small startup and the enterprise behemoth.
Rob Seaman, Slack’s current chief product officer, will become interim CEO of Slack, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the executive changes.
Representatives for Slack hadn’t responded to WIRED’s requests for comment at the time of publication.
In Dresser’s tenure as Slack’s CEO, she oversaw the rollout of several large scale AI features, including AI-generated meeting summaries and an integration with Salesforce’s AI agents. Earlier this year, when Elon Musk took on a prominent role in the US government, Dresser occasionally took to X to show support, saying she agreed that federal employees should be required to send bullet-pointed emails about what they’ve accomplished, and sending a “thumbs up” emoji to a post about President Donald Trump signing an executive order mandating federal agencies to work with Musk’s DOGE.
Paresh Dave and Maxwell Zeff contributed to this report.
