Dali Rajic: Who OpenAI's New Chief Revenue Officer Is and Why He Was Hired

OpenAI named Dali Rajic, the former President and COO of cybersecurity company Wiz, as its Chief Revenue Officer on August 13, 2026, succeeding Denise Dresser after just eight months on the job. The hire lands as OpenAI's business customer base crosses 2 million and, according to figures CFO Sarah Friar shared with investors that same month, its enterprise revenue overtakes consumer ChatGPT subscriptions for the first time.

A CRO change at a company preparing for a public listing is normally a footnote. This one isn't, because of who OpenAI picked and what he inherits. Rajic spent the last two and a half years running go-to-market at one of the fastest-growing cybersecurity startups in history, and the enterprise motion he's now stepping into at OpenAI has already scaled past the one his predecessor was hired to build. The full announcement is covered in our news desk's Pulse report on the appointment; this piece is the reference version of who Rajic is, what he's done, and why the timing matters.

Who Is Dali Rajic?

Dali Rajic is a 53-year-old enterprise go-to-market executive with roughly 25 years of experience scaling sales organizations at technology companies, and his last stop before OpenAI was President and COO of Wiz. He built his reputation running disciplined, metrics-driven revenue teams at three companies in a row that were each acquired or went public at multi-billion-dollar valuations: AppDynamics, Zscaler, and Wiz.

Before Wiz, Rajic spent over seven years at AppDynamics, joining in April 2012 and rising to Chief Revenue Officer in August 2016 and then Chief Customer and Revenue Officer in February 2018. According to PYMNTS, he helped take AppDynamics from roughly $7 million to nearly $1 billion in annual recurring revenue, a run that culminated in Cisco's $3.7 billion acquisition of the company in 2017. He stayed on through the post-acquisition period before leaving in September 2019.

Dali Rajic's Career: AppDynamics, Zscaler, Wiz

Rajic joined cloud-security company Zscaler in 2019 as President of Go-to-Market and Chief Revenue Officer, then was promoted to Chief Operating Officer in 2022. Over his roughly four and a half years there, Zscaler's revenue grew by more than 700%, according to Yahoo Finance's profile of his career. He left Zscaler abruptly in February 2024 to join Wiz, a move that cybersecurity trade press covered at the time as a signal of where the company saw the next big growth story.

At Wiz, Rajic ran the go-to-market organization through the company's climb past $1 billion in annual recurring revenue in 2025, a milestone it hit in less than five years after founding. Wiz was already on Google's radar: Google first offered $23 billion for the company in 2024, an offer Wiz's board turned down on the belief it could grow into a larger number. Google returned with a formal agreement in March 2025 at $32 billion, and the all-cash deal closed in March 2026 after clearing antitrust review from the U.S. Department of Justice, followed by the European Union, Australia, Singapore, and Japan. It stands as the largest acquisition in Google's history, according to The Times of Israel, which also called it the largest exit in Israeli tech history.

Dali Rajic's Track Record, Company by Company

Compiled from OpenAI's official announcement, PYMNTS, Yahoo Finance, The Times of Israel's Wiz-Google coverage, and CNBC's reporting on OpenAI's August 2026 executive departures.

What Happened to Denise Dresser, OpenAI's Previous CRO?

Denise Dresser joined OpenAI in December 2025 after leading Slack, Salesforce's workplace-messaging subsidiary, as CEO. OpenAI said at the time she would oversee global revenue strategy across enterprise and customer success. Eight months later, OpenAI said she was leaving to "pursue other opportunities" and would stay on temporarily to help with the transition. Her departure came just days after OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap, an eight-year company veteran and longtime colleague of CEO Sam Altman, announced he was also leaving, which CNBC described as OpenAI's second major executive departure in a matter of days.

Why OpenAI Hired Dali Rajic Now

OpenAI's business customer base passed 2 million around the time of Rajic's appointment, double the 1 million milestone the company reported in November 2025. Growth in that customer count was running at roughly 32% month over month in July 2026, even faster than the company's overall 20% monthly run-rate growth for the same period, according to figures OpenAI's CFO shared with investors and CNBC later reported. Enterprise revenue overtook consumer ChatGPT subscriptions for the first time in August 2026, a shift OpenAI had told investors during its March 2026 funding round it expected by year-end — arriving roughly six months early.

How OpenAI's Revenue Mix Shifted Into the Handoff

At the start of 2026, OpenAI's revenue split was roughly 60% consumer ChatGPT subscriptions and 40% enterprise. By August, CFO Sarah Friar told investors at a closed-door meeting that enterprise had pulled roughly even with consumer, a mix shift OpenAI's own guidance hadn't expected until year-end. That reversal, more than any single number in the announcement, is the backdrop Rajic is walking into: a revenue organization where the harder-to-sell, higher-touch enterprise motion has become the larger half of the business.

OpenAI's total annualized run rate reached $40 billion in August 2026, up from roughly $20 billion at the start of the year.

What Will Dali Rajic Oversee at OpenAI?

OpenAI described the role as leading its "global revenue organization," which spans enterprise sales, the API business sold to developers and companies building on GPT-5-class models, and customer success across both segments. As of mid-2026, that organization was managing more than 3 million paid ChatGPT Enterprise and Business seats across roughly 600,000 customer accounts, with 92% of the Fortune 500 running at least one paid deployment. ChatGPT for Work specifically had grown to more than 7 million seats, up 40% in just two months, with ChatGPT Enterprise seat growth running at roughly 9x year over year. In his own statement on the appointment, Rajic said, "I'm excited to join the team, build on the momentum already in place, and lead the revenue organization," according to OpenAI's official announcement.

What the headline misses

The "OpenAI brings in a proven revenue operator" framing skips over how unusual the churn around this hire actually is. Rajic is OpenAI's second CRO in under a year, and his appointment landed in the same week as the departure of an eight-year company veteran in Brad Lightcap, plus a July 2026 exit from product and business chief Fidji Simo, who stepped back for health reasons. One read on this: a company this close to a public listing changing its top revenue executive twice in nine months is, on its own, a reasonable governance question for prospective IPO investors, independent of whether Rajic himself is a strong hire. It's also worth separating what changed from what didn't — OpenAI's enterprise revenue had already reached parity with consumer before Rajic started, which means his mandate is explicitly to scale an existing motion rather than fix or redesign one. Whether a CRO change six months before a possible IPO filing unseal reassures or unsettles outside investors is a genuinely open question, not a settled one.

The Bottom Line

Dali Rajic is a specific type of hire: an operator with a repeatable track record of scaling enterprise go-to-market teams at AppDynamics, Zscaler, and Wiz, each of which sold or was valued in the billions under his watch. OpenAI brought him in to run a revenue organization that had already crossed 2 million business customers and reached rough parity between enterprise and consumer revenue on a $40 billion run rate, replacing a CRO who lasted eight months amid a broader wave of senior departures ahead of a possible public listing. The job Rajic was hired for looks less like a turnaround and more like continuity at scale — the open question is whether OpenAI's revenue leadership stays stable long enough for that scaling to show up in audited numbers.