'Sales First' High-Performance AI Talent Recruitment... OpenAI Strengthens Korea Operations

OpenAI, which has established a domestic corporation, has decided to prioritize the 'sales organization' and strengthen its workforce. As it recruits mainly experienced professionals with 5 to 14 years of experience in related fields, it is interpreted that it will continue aggressive recruitment with the intention of securing domestic clients and increasing contact with the next government, keeping in mind full-scale Korean operations.

■Recruitment of Experts with Approximately 3 Billion Revenue Over 3 Years

According to the job posting by OpenAI on the 29th, the six recruitment positions are divided into three types in the 'Go-To-Market (GTM)' sector responsible for sales and three types in technical support and customer management. In the case of the Account Director (Customer Management Director) of the sales team, they are responsible for institutional, large corporate, and digital native clients. Particularly, in the case of the Strategic Customer Management Director responsible for institutions or a few key companies, it requires high experience with more than 3 years of achieving annual revenue of over 2 million dollars (approximately 2.75 billion won) and more than 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 roles.

In the industry, it is expected that OpenAI will focus on B2B sales to increase major Korean clients while strengthening the sales organization after securing general subscribers. Securing 'expert talent' in related fields is more important than anything else. As it presented demanding conditions, it is also expected that astronomical salaries will be offered to secure domestic talent.

Previously, OpenAI officially established a domestic corporation on the 26th and announced that it would soon open its first office in Seoul. In Asia, it is the third after Tokyo, Japan, and Singapore. The background of OpenAI's entry into Korea includes △ Korea's competitive technology industry △ innovation culture encompassing businesses and academia △ high interest in using AI tools in everyday life. 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 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.

■Securing Domestic Allies Following Kakao

Particularly, even before establishing the corporation, it had maintained a close cooperative relationship with domestic representative IT companies such as Kakao, so more aggressive business expansion is expected. Through this cooperation, it can create synergy by securing large volumes of service data generated from Korea's digital-friendly environment. Additionally, OpenAI is launching the 'Stargate Project' to build large-scale data centers in collaboration with SoftBank, Oracle, and others, expanding its stage to the world. As it announced plans to build data centers in cooperation with governments and local companies in each country, smooth communication with the next government is also expected to be a major task.

Jason Kwon, OpenAI's Chief Strategy Officer (CSO), met with AI policy officials from both the Democratic Party and the People Power Party's Central Election Countermeasures Committee on the 26th to introduce OpenAI's Stargate Project and discuss infrastructure cooperation plans.

Professor Choi Byung-ho of Korea University's AI Research Institute analyzed, "Korea is an attractive market with a lot of service data or public digital data that OpenAI lacks," and "It will continue aggressive recruitment to secure talented individuals with many points of contact with major companies and the government."


wongood@fnnews.com Joo Won-kyu Reporter