OpenAI has restructured parts of its leadership team, bringing back a well-known figure to spearhead its drive to sell AI solutions to corporate clients. This move is part of the company's strategy to close the gap with competitors by 2026.

Barret Zoph has been appointed to oversee OpenAI's enterprise sales initiatives, according to an internal company memo. Zoph rejoined OpenAI last week after departing from Thinking Machine Labs, an AI startup founded by former OpenAI co-founder Mira Murati, where he had served as co-founder and chief technology officer since October 2024. The details surrounding his exit are unclear, with speculation about whether Zoph and several other former OpenAI staff were dismissed or left voluntarily, potentially with the intention of returning all along. Previously, Zoph held the position of vice president of post-training inference at OpenAI from September 2022 to October 2024.

He is now assuming a distinctly different role and is expected to be a key player as the company aims to expand its enterprise division—a segment where it is currently losing market share to rivals. OpenAI introduced its business-focused ChatGPT Enterprise product in 2023, over a year before Anthropic and several years before Google launched their own enterprise offerings. The company reports that the product has attracted more than 5 million business users, with clients including SoftBank, Target, and Loewe’s.

Despite this, OpenAI's market position is declining while competitors gain ground. Anthropic leads the pack in enterprise large language model usage, commanding a 40% market share according to a December report from venture capital firm Menlo Ventures, which has made significant investments in Anthropic. This marks an increase from an estimated 32% share in July.

Google's Gemini adoption has shown more stability, as noted by Menlo Ventures. After releasing its enterprise product last fall, Google's share of enterprise LLM usage remained relatively steady, growing slightly from 20% in July to 21% by year's end.

In contrast, OpenAI has experienced a notable drop in its usage market share, falling from 50% in 2023 to 27% by the end of 2025—a trend that appears to be causing concern within the company. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman previously expressed worries in an internal memo that GoogleGemini's growth was beginning to challenge OpenAI's position.

Enterprise expansion is a primary focus for OpenAI in 2026, as highlighted by CFO Sarah Friar in a recent blog post. The company has already taken steps in this direction by announcing an extended multi-year partnership with ServiceNow, which will provide ServiceNow customers with access to OpenAI's models.