OpenAI brings back Barret Zoph to lead enterprise push amid market share pressure

OpenAI has reorganised parts of its leadership structure and appointed Barret Zoph to lead its enterprise AI sales efforts, as the company sharpens its focus on business customers in 2026. The move was reported by The Information, citing an internal company memo.

Zoph rejoined OpenAI last week after leaving Thinking Machine Labs, an artificial intelligence startup founded by former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati. He had served as co-founder and CTO at the startup since October 2024. OpenAI has not publicly detailed the circumstances surrounding his departure or return.

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Zoph previously worked at OpenAI as vice president of post-training inference from September 2022 until October 2024. His new role marks a shift from technical leadership to a commercial focus, as OpenAI seeks to expand adoption of its AI products among enterprise customers.

OpenAI entered the enterprise market in 2023 with the launch of ChatGPT Enterprise, ahead of offerings from rivals Anthropic and Google. The company says the product has more than five million business users and counts firms such as SoftBank, Target and Lowe’s among its customers.

Despite its early entry, OpenAI’s share of enterprise large language model usage has declined. According to a December report from venture capital firm Menlo Ventures, OpenAI’s enterprise usage share fell from 50% in 2023 to 27% by the end of 2025. Over the same period, Anthropic increased its share to 40%, while Google’s Gemini platform grew modestly from 20% to 21%.

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Internal communications have indicated concern within OpenAI about growing competition, particularly from Google’s enterprise AI offerings. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman previously highlighted the need to address competitive pressures in the enterprise segment.

Enterprise growth has been identified as a priority area for 2026. OpenAI chief financial officer Sarah Friar reiterated this focus in a recent blog post. The company has also announced an expanded multi-year partnership with ServiceNow, aimed at making OpenAI’s models available to ServiceNow’s enterprise customers.