OpenAI will nearly double its headcount to 8,000 from 4,500 within this year. The move aims to break through a situation in which it is being pushed back by Anthropic in the market for corporate customers, the Financial Times reported on Friday, citing 2 people familiar with the matter.
New hires will be concentrated in product development, engineering, research and sales. OpenAI will also significantly expand so-called “technical ambassador” staff to help business customers make better use of AI tools.
In the corporate customer market, OpenAI is far behind Anthropic. Data from payments startup Ramp shows that among business customers adopting AI for the first time, the share choosing Anthropic is three times that of OpenAI. That is the opposite of the situation a year ago. Anthropic’s annual recurring revenue has been increasing by $1 billion each week this year since the launch of its coding tool, Claude Code, the FT reported.
OpenAI is also discussing setting up joint ventures with private equity firms. The goal is to distribute OpenAI products directly to the funds’ portfolio companies. Through this, OpenAI expects the share of business customers in total revenue to rise to 50 percent from 40 percent by the end of this year.
Chi-gyu Hwang
delight@d-today.co.kr