When Aliisa Rosenthal took on the role of OpenAI’s head of sales in June 2022, as the company’s first commercial hire, the sales team was just a few reps strong and with little to offer commercially. She initially doubted whether OpenAI could find the right product-market fit for successful commercial products. That changed dramatically six months later with the launch of ChatGPT, transforming OpenAI overnight from a research lab catering mainly to developers into one of the world’s most recognizable companies. Rosenthal quickly expanded her team, eventually leading a go-to-market organization of over 300 employees. However, as OpenAI grew, Rosenthal realized she wanted to work on a smaller scale again, this time in venture capital. After a summer break, she joined Acrew Capital as a general partner, assisting portfolio companies in areas like pricing, go-to-market strategies, AI-native sales, and commercial scaling decisions. She described OpenAI as one of the most inspiring companies she’s ever worked with but found her role diverging from the research and technical problem-solving that motivated her. By her departure, her sales team was physically separated from the product and engineering teams, and she missed being close to builders, experiments, and challenging technical choices, seeking to realign her work with that passion. In early 2024, Rosenthal emphasized her strong alignment with OpenAI’s mission to distribute the benefits of safe artificial general intelligence (AGI)—defined as highly autonomous systems outperforming humans at economically valuable tasks. She portrayed her sales team less as revenue drivers and more as “AGI sherpas, ” guiding users and customers through a monumental technological transition. She still identifies with that role, highlighting that selling AI products involves more than tools; it’s about easing customer fears and uncertainties regarding how AI works, data privacy, and trustworthiness. Almost half of the sales process, she said, is dedicated to building comfort and understanding in buyers. Having engaged with thousands of companies at OpenAI, Rosenthal is now eager to support startup founders through the complex AI buying journey. She believes significant opportunities remain for startups, even amidst giants like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others dominating the space. She stresses that enterprise AI applications represent a vast “green space” with ample room for innovation.

While OpenAI will tackle some areas, it cannot realistically cover the entire enterprise ecosystem. Reflecting on her early days at OpenAI—when only developers used the product—she recalls questioning the lack of broader applications. The launch of ChatGPT six months later was transformative, making AI accessible and understandable to C-suite executives and broader audiences. Rosenthal is deeply committed to making AI technology approachable and navigable, advocating for the application layer as key to widespread adoption and business success. Her insights segue into broader AI news, including major developments and industry movements: - Apple is developing an AI-powered wearable pin, roughly the size of an AirTag, featuring cameras, microphones, a speaker, and wireless charging. While still early-stage and uncertain to launch, the device could arrive by 2027, aiming to compete with AI hardware from OpenAI and Meta. This initiative fits within Apple’s broader AI-first product pipeline, including sensor-rich AirPods, smart glasses, security cameras, and robotic base home devices, marking Apple’s strong bet on ambient, always-on AI interfaces. - Google DeepMind recently acquihired Hume AI’s CEO and top engineers, a startup specializing in emotionally intelligent voice interfaces. This move highlights the increasing importance of emotion recognition in voice AI to create more human-like, effective assistants. Hume, having raised $74M, anticipates $100M revenue by 2026 by fine-tuning AI models’ voice capabilities. - OpenAI is reorganizing its leadership to accelerate enterprise AI, appointing Barret Zoph, cofounder of Thinking Machines Lab, to lead enterprise sales efforts. The company is shifting to a “general manager” product structure for ChatGPT, enterprise, Codex, and advertising to enhance integration among research, product, and engineering. COO Brad Lightcap steps back from product and engineering leadership but continues overseeing commercial functions, while CTO of applications Vijaye Raji assumes responsibility for advertising. Regarding AI adoption statistics, the Deloitte 2026 State of AI in the Enterprise report found that 60% of workers now use employer-sanctioned AI tools, signaling a shift from pilot phases to enterprise-wide scaling. However, governance around AI agents remains nascent: only 21% of organizations have robust oversight, and just 23% currently use AI agents. This is expected to grow rapidly, with 74% of companies projected to adopt AI agents within two years while the proportion of non-users drops from 25% to 5%. Upcoming AI events include the World Economic Forum in Davos (Jan 19-23), AAAI Conference in Singapore (Jan 20-27), AI Action Summit in New Delhi (Feb 10-11), Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (Mar 2-5), and Nvidia GTC in San Jose (Mar 16-19). — Sharon Goldman sharon. goldman@fortune. com @sharongoldman