Slack chief executive Denise Dresser is leaving the company to become chief revenue officer at OpenAI, a move confirmed in a memo by Salesforce Inc (NYSE:CRM, XETRA:FOO) boss Marc Benioff.
She starts next week and will report to Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s chief operating officer.
At her new post, she will run the fast-growing enterprise division, which helps large organisations weave ChatGPT and automated agents into everyday work. OpenAI executives say her experience scaling enterprise products will help make the company’s tools usable at global level.
Dresser spent 14 years at Slack and rose through Salesforce’s sales organisation before becoming chief executive in 2023.
She led Slack’s shift into artificial intelligence, adding features such as automated meeting summaries and deeper integration with Salesforce’s agent technology. Rob Seaman, the company’s product chief, will serve as interim chief executive.
Her arrival marks a more mature commercial phase for OpenAI as it prepares to compete with Microsoft, Google and Salesforce for dominance in workplace software.
The company wants to be seen as infrastructure for automated agent workflows rather than just a chatbot, and a seasoned operator helps turn that ambition into long-term contracts.
For Slack, the departure adds uncertainty at a time when collaboration tools are being reshaped by artificial intelligence and competitive pressure from Microsoft Teams continues to grow.