OpenAI’s appointment of former Slack CEO Denise Dresser as chief revenue officer positions the company to accelerate its enterprise strategy and drive upside for key partners, according to Jefferies analysts.
The analysts see the hire representing a meaningful shift in OpenAI’s commercial posture heading into 2026.
They wrote that Dresser “an ideal CRO with the experience needed to scale its enterprise business.” “With over 14 years at Salesforce and extensive experience leading enterprise initiatives, Denise brings the expertise and network needed to build and scale OpenAI’s enterprise motion,” they wrote.
The analysts highlighted that OpenAI’s enterprise business is expanding faster than its consumer products, pointing to disclosures that enterprise now accounts for roughly 40% of revenue.
Jefferies expects the company to “lean into enterprise in 2026 & beyond, given strong traction,” and framed the shift as a tactical positive for Microsoft, which holds a 27% stake in OpenAI and participates in revenue-sharing and cloud hosting.
Even with overlapping products like Microsoft 365 Copilot, the analysts wrote that Microsoft’s scale and distribution “should outweigh overlap.” Oracle and CrowdStrike were also cited as beneficiaries due to what the analysts described as “heavy backlog exposure to OpenAI.”
Further, Jefferies pointed to OpenAI’s latest enterprise usage report as evidence of broadening adoption. According to the analysts, “more than 9,000 organizations have now processed over 10 billion tokens, and nearly 200 have exceeded 1 trillion tokens,” while API activity is diversifying beyond early categories like customer service and content generation.
Custom GPT usage was another area the analysts highlighted as a strong signal of deeper integration inside companies.
“Approximately 20% of all Enterprise messages were processed via a Custom GPT or Projects, with weekly users of these products up 19x year-to-date,” they wrote, adding that this trend supports platforms positioned to help organizations build AI systems tied to internal workflows.
The analysts also pointed to rising coding activity among nontechnical teams using ChatGPT Enterprise, noting that messages related to coding rose 36% over six months outside engineering and research roles. They argued this “underscores how AI is driving broader software creation and consumption.”
Enterprise adoption remains strongest in professional services, finance and technology, which saw 11-fold growth year over year, according to the analysts. Healthcare and manufacturing were cited among the fastest-growing verticals, while the median sector expanded six-fold.