OpenAI talent exodus raises 'huge red flag' ahead of IPO

Denise's background is in productivity SaaS (Slack), which requires a different GTM and sales motion from an infra play which is what foundation model vendors have become. Same with Brad Lightcap, who doesn't have experience managing an org at OpenAI's scale and size (before OpenAI he was part of YC's investing team and did standard CorpFinance and IB work) as well as Fidji Simo (Instacart, which is B2C and B2B2C)

What OpenAI is signaling is that they are making a hard shift away from productivity tooling towards concentrating on being an infra play - which honestly is the right move because foundation models have become the new hyperscalers and datalakes.