A quick look at open positions in OpenAI can tell us a lot about where AI is going. The answer is simple: go-to-market, first corporate users, and then, very probably, advertising. It also tells us much about the geolocation of these positions: worldwide. The company is set to take over the corporate market by storm. Much like Google did with the Workspace free account in the early 2000s, OpenAI wants to recruit companies and “help customers understand the deep impact that highly capable AI models can bring to their business and users.”
The implication is enormous for Microsoft and Google. First, if you take a look at what Google did to Microsoft Office: according to Enlyst, Google productivity apps have 50 percent of the worldwide market share, followed closely by 47 percent for the Office 365 suite. Even if this figure is skewed—since it includes Gmail as part of the offering—the fact is that the strategy worked. It slowly eroded Microsoft’s dominance using the bundle strategy. It seems OpenAI is taking a page from that same playbook. By chipping away at answers and summaries of daily life activities, OpenAI might end up being the dominant player in search. The listings also tell us a story about international expansion, with positions in Japan, Germany, Singapore, Ireland, India, Australia, and the UK. The company is set to take the global market even if they seem to be lacking sufficient personnel—ironic, to be honest.
Things get interesting when you look at Digital Natives account directors, who will be asked to: “In pursuit of this mission, our Go To Market (GTM) team is responsible for helping customers learn how to leverage and deploy our highly capable AI products across their business.” The positions are clearly a market grab, with hires being asked to “Own a consumption revenue target.”
According to OpenAI, the roles will involve a combination of technical expertise, vision, partnership, and value-driven strategy. I forecast that the first step is to rapidly expand the corporate user base, and then to push other services. This is a standard playbook from the tech industry and should not come as a surprise to anyone. The difference noted here and in various media outlets is the speed at which it is happening—user adoption is almost akin to selling water in the Sahara. The question is how much space will be left for potential competitors in the AI space. And that’s where we should be worried: one thing is to have a dominant company in search or productivity apps, but a completely different proposition is to have a dominant company in world knowledge of companies. I’ve stated before that I find it interesting that CEOs mention workforce reduction because of AI but don’t seem to admit that the first job to be easily replaced is the CEO.
Looking at job postings is a good way to understand where the industry is going, but also where new jobs will be created. For now, the safer bet is in sales to businesses that have not yet adopted this technology—or so it seems.
