OpenAI shifts strategy toward enterprise AI services as rivals gain ground in the corporate market.
OpenAI is sharpening its focus on business customers as it looks to strengthen its position in the enterprise AI market in 2026. The company has quietly reshuffled parts of its leadership and brought back a well-known executive to lead this push. The move signals how serious OpenAI is about competing for corporate clients at a time when rivals are gaining ground.
Barrett Zoph Returns to Lead Enterprise Efforts
According to reporting from The Information, OpenAI has appointed Barret Zoph to head its enterprise sales strategy. The decision was shared internally through a company memo. OpenAI has not publicly confirmed the move, and the company did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Zoph returned to OpenAI last week after a short stint at Thinking Machine Labs, an AI startup founded by former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati. Zoph joined that company in October 2024 as a co-founder and CTO. His exit from the startup has raised questions, with industry chatter suggesting that several former OpenAI employees may have planned to return to the company all along. The exact details remain unclear.
Before leaving OpenAI in 2024, Zoph served as vice president of post-training inference, a highly technical role focused on how AI models perform after they are trained. His new position is very different and places him closer to customers, revenue growth, and long-term strategy.
A Strategic Shift for OpenAI
Zoph’s return comes at a critical time. OpenAI is facing increasing pressure in the enterprise market, where businesses are choosing between several competing AI platforms. While OpenAI was an early mover, it is no longer the clear leader.
The company launched ChatGPT Enterprise in 2023, well before many of its rivals rolled out similar offerings. At the time, this gave OpenAI a strong advantage. The company says ChatGPT Enterprise now serves more than five million business users. Its customer list includes major brands such as SoftBank, Target, and Lowe’s. Despite that early lead, OpenAI’s grip on the market has weakened.
Rivals Gain Ground in Enterprise AI
New data shows that OpenAI’s share of enterprise large language model usage has fallen sharply over the past two years. A December report from venture capital firm Menlo Ventures found that OpenAI’s usage share dropped from 50 percent in 2023 to 27 percent by the end of 2025.
During the same period, Anthropic surged ahead. The AI research company now holds an estimated 40 percent share of enterprise LLM usage. That figure was closer to 32 percent just a few months earlier. While Menlo Ventures is an investor in Anthropic, the trend reflects growing confidence among businesses in Anthropic’s models and tools.
Google has also made steady progress. Its Gemini enterprise product launched last fall and has shown consistent adoption. According to the same report, Google’s enterprise market share rose slightly from 20 percent in July to 21 percent by the end of the year.
Internal Concern at OpenAI
The decline has not gone unnoticed inside OpenAI. CEO Sam Altman reportedly warned staff in an internal memo that Google’s enterprise growth was starting to cut into OpenAI’s position. That concern appears to be one of the forces driving the company’s renewed focus on enterprise customers.
CFO Sarah Friar reinforced this message in a recent blog post, writing that enterprise growth would be a major priority for OpenAI in 2026. The company sees business clients as a key source of stable, long-term revenue, especially as consumer AI tools become more competitive and harder to differentiate.
Partnerships to Boost Enterprise Reach
OpenAI has already taken steps to support this strategy. The company recently announced an expanded multi-year partnership with ServiceNow. Through this deal, ServiceNow customers will gain access to OpenAI’s models as part of their existing workflows.
This type of partnership allows OpenAI to reach large organizations without selling directly to each customer. It also helps embed its technology into tools that businesses already rely on for operations, customer service, and IT management.
Why Zoph’s Role Matters
Bringing Barret Zoph back into the company suggests OpenAI wants someone who understands both the technical foundations of its models and the expectations of enterprise clients. While he is not known as a traditional sales executive, his deep knowledge of OpenAI’s systems could help bridge the gap between engineering teams and business customers.
Enterprise buyers often care less about flashy features and more about reliability, security, customization, and long-term support. OpenAI’s challenge will be proving it can deliver on those needs at scale while facing intense competition from Anthropic and Google.
The Road Ahead
As 2026 approaches, OpenAI’s enterprise push looks like a make-or-break effort. The company still has a powerful brand, strong technology, and a large installed base. But the market is moving quickly, and rivals are capitalizing on OpenAI’s early lead.
Zoph’s return, new partnerships, and leadership focus suggest OpenAI is ready to fight harder for enterprise dollars. Whether that will be enough to reverse its declining market share remains one of the biggest questions in the AI industry this year.
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