India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) takes a gaggle photograph with AI firm leaders together with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (C) and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei (R) on the AI Affect Summit in New Delhi on February 19, 2026.
Ludovic Marin | Afp | Getty Photographs
Software program giants are seeing their worst inventory efficiency in years on fears of AI disruption. Now they’ve a brand new downside.
A number of high software program executives have been poached by AI giants which can be looking for expertise with gross sales and go-to-market expertise, in line with sources.
Executives from Salesforce, Snowflake, and Datadog have been poached lately by OpenAI and Anthropic, lured by giant compensation packages and the chance to convey current company relationships to those AI firms, in line with a number of sources.
Salesforce and OpenAI declined to remark. CNBC reached out to Snowflake and Datadog for remark.
One among OpenAI’s splashiest software program hires was Denise Dresser. Dresser is now the chief income officer and beforehand served as CEO of the communication platform Slack inside Salesforce. Jennifer Majlessi additionally joined Salesforce final month and took a task as head of go-to-market at OpenAI, in line with LinkedIn. Anthropic has additionally employed from Salesforce, in line with a supply conversant in the hires.
Competing for expertise is not new in AI. Elite researchers have been the spotlight of the so-called “expertise struggle” in AI, attracting multimillion-dollar salaries and signing bonuses within the tens of thousands and thousands.
However the brand new frontier within the expertise struggle speaks to AI giants’ altering priorities. The enterprise phase has change into an more and more essential progress space for OpenAI — it is a way more worthwhile and “sticky” a part of the enterprise. Executives from Salesforce, Snowflake and others convey a deep bench of enterprise relationships to assist develop this phase.
As of January, enterprise clients made up roughly 40% of OpenAI’s enterprise. However CFO Sarah Friar lately mentioned the corporate is on observe to convey that to 50% by the top of the yr. OpenAI introduced in November that greater than 1 million enterprise clients worldwide are utilizing the corporate’s expertise.
For software program firms, it is the most recent AI headwind.
The sector has already been crushed this yr on considerations that AI instruments from firms like Anthropic and OpenAI will upend the dominant cloud subscription mannequin. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software program ETF (IGV), which tracks the sector, is down nearly 20% this yr.
Some workers are additionally making an attempt to get forward of layoffs. Earlier this month, CNBC confirmed that Oracle was shedding 1000’s of workers because it doubled down on AI cloud computing. Meta and Microsoft have additionally introduced plans to cut back their workforces, with Meta reinvesting in AI.
The structural change within the tech workforce is prompting IT professionals to contemplate the place they’ll add worth and experience the most recent expertise development as extra firms pour cash into AI.
Gross sales government Majlessi posted on LinkedIn that she was leaving Salesforce to affix OpenAI. “What makes this chance particularly significant is my real perception within the product. I’ve seen how helpful this expertise could be in each work and life,” Majlessi wrote.
Two sources share that OpenAI has additionally poached forward-deployed engineers from Palantir Applied sciences in current months.
Ahead-deployed engineers are thought of by the trade to be top-tier professionals expert at serving to purchasers implement instrumental adjustments to their companies on-site utilizing numerous software program capabilities. CNBC reached out to Palantir for remark.
Whereas conventional tech executives have a deep bench of relationships, sources at AI firms say it is not at all times a cultural match. Some lack the drive to work lengthy hours that the fast-growing AI firms demand, one government mentioned.
— CNBC’s Noah Broder contributed to this report
