OpenAI has hired Brian McCarthy as vice president of global sales, bringing in a former SpaceX and Cursor revenue executive to help build out its sales organization and expand its enterprise business overseas. McCarthy will work with Chief Revenue Officer Dali Rajic as the company competes with Anthropic for corporate AI spending and seeks to broaden a revenue stream that could become increasingly important as it prepares for a potential initial public offering.
McCarthy brings SpaceX and enterprise software experience
McCarthy joined SpaceX in August, following the company's acquisition of Cursor. He served as head of global revenue and field operations at both Cursor and SpaceX.
Before joining Cursor, McCarthy led enterprise sales teams at Rubrik, ThoughtSpot, AppDynamics and Qlik, building experience selling software to large corporate customers. The global sales vice president role at OpenAI is newly created, and McCarthy is not replacing an existing executive.
He is also the first senior executive recruited by Rajic since she joined OpenAI. Rajic formally became the company's chief revenue officer on Aug. 24, less than a month before McCarthy's appointment. The two previously worked together at AppDynamics, where Rajic was chief revenue officer and McCarthy was vice president of sales from 2017 to 2018.
AppDynamics was preparing to go public during their tenure, but Cisco acquired the company one day before its planned listing. Rajic has also recruited two sales executives from AI data company Snowflake: Mark Fleming, Snowflake's senior vice president of enterprise sales, and Jaime Patel, vice president of North America enterprise sales engineering. Neither immediately responded to requests for comment.
OpenAI plans to expand its enterprise sales operation
OpenAI said McCarthy will work with Rajic to expand the sales team, grow the enterprise business and accelerate its efforts to reach corporate customers globally. The role covers more than new customer acquisition. It also involves helping companies deploy OpenAI's frontier models in day-to-day business operations.
Anthropic's Claude Code has gained broad adoption among enterprise customers, while OpenAI is seeking to rebuild its share of corporate AI spending. Data from Ramp through this week showed that OpenAI's latest Astra model had overtaken Anthropic's Fable model in enterprise spending. The figures track changes in company spending on the products and do not represent the total share of the enterprise AI market.
The corporate customer segment is becoming more important to AI model providers. Enterprise contracts typically involve longer purchasing relationships, more user seats and more complex deployment services than consumer subscriptions. That makes the reach of a sales organization, along with its ability to support implementation, a direct factor in the pace of commercialization. OpenAI's changes at both the chief revenue officer and global sales levels place its enterprise operation within a clearer revenue-expansion structure.
McCarthy stresses control and safe enterprise use
In a LinkedIn post announcing his move to OpenAI, McCarthy said he supported the direction set by Chief Executive Sam Altman, co-founder and President Greg Brockman, and Rajic to encourage enterprise AI adoption. He said AI should help people solve complex problems, complete work that was previously difficult to achieve and create new opportunities.
McCarthy also said companies need to use powerful technology carefully. He described that approach as helping customers use AI tools safely, ensuring people retain control and enabling more people to benefit from AI applications.
In an OpenAI LinkedIn post, Rajic said McCarthy combines a strong focus on customers with a belief that technology can improve people's work and lives. She said she looked forward to working with him to scale OpenAI's business, help companies pursue transformation and bring AI to more users around the world.
OpenAI has not disclosed specific performance targets, the size of McCarthy's team or his compensation. As the company continues to pursue enterprise customers, his global sales experience at major software companies, Cursor and SpaceX will form a central part of his background in the newly created role.