OpenAI strengthens 'sales organization'... Expected to increase contact with major clients and government

[Financial News] OpenAI, which has established a domestic corporation, has decided to prioritize the 'sales organization' and build up its workforce. By recruiting mainly experienced professionals with 5-14 years of experience in related fields, it is interpreted that they will continue aggressive recruitment with an eye on securing domestic clients and increasing contact with the next government, as well as full-scale sales in Korea.
On the 29th, according to the job posting by OpenAI, the six recruitment positions are divided into three types in the 'Go-To-Market (GTM)' sector responsible for sales and three types for technical support and customer management. In the case of the sales team's account director (customer management manager), they will be responsible for institutional, large corporate, and digital native clients. In particular, the strategic customer management manager responsible for institutions or a few key companies requires high experience, such as achieving annual revenue of over 2 million dollars (about 2.75 billion won) for more than 3 years and over 14 years of experience in selling Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Software as a Service (SaaS), making it the most demanding condition in this recruitment. A high understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) technology is essential for all positions. 
In the industry, it is expected that OpenAI will focus on B2B sales, increasing major Korean clients while strengthening the sales organization in a situation where it has secured general subscribers. Securing 'expert talent' in related fields is more important than anything else. It is also expected that astronomical salaries will be offered to secure domestic talent given the demanding conditions. 
Previously, OpenAI officially established a domestic corporation on the 26th and announced that it would soon open its first office in Seoul. It is the third in Asia, following Tokyo, Japan, and Singapore. The background for OpenAI's entry into Korea includes △ Korea's competitive technology industry △ Innovation culture encompassing companies and academia △ High interest in the use of AI tools in everyday life by the general public. According to OpenAI, the number of weekly active ChatGPT users in Korea has increased more than 4.5 times over the past year. Korea is the country with the second most ChatGPT paid subscribers in the world after the United States and is one of the top 10 countries in the world in terms of the number of ChatGPT users.
In particular, even before the establishment of the corporation, it was expected that business expansion would be more active due to the close cooperative relationship with domestic leading IT companies such as Kakao. Through this cooperation, it is possible to create synergy by securing a large amount of service data coming from Korea's digital-friendly environment.
In addition, OpenAI, along with SoftBank and Oracle, is launching the 'Stargate Project', a large-scale data center construction project, and expanding its stage to the world. As it announced that it would build data centers in cooperation with governments and local companies in each country, smooth communication with the next government is expected to be a major task. Jason Kwon, OpenAI's Chief Strategy Officer (CSO), also met with AI policy officials from the Democratic Party and the People's Power Party's central election committee on the 26th to introduce OpenAI's Stargate Project and discuss infrastructure cooperation plans. 
Professor Choi Byung-ho of Korea University AI Research Institute analyzed, "Korea is an attractive market for OpenAI with a lot of service data or public digital data that OpenAI lacks," and "they will continue aggressive recruitment to secure talented individuals with many contact points with major companies and the government." 


wongood@fnnews.com Joo Won-kyu Reporter