Hard Fork AI OpenAI Leadership Reshuffle, AI Unicorns, and White-Collar Work
Jan 23, 2026
Leadership changes at a major AI company as it refocuses on winning enterprise customers. The rapid rise of infrastructure startups reaching unicorn valuations and the value of voice and inference tooling. New benchmarks testing models on white-collar tasks and what that means for professional workflows. Agent-driven tools for calendar scheduling and agent-to-agent negotiation for meetings.
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Leadership Move To Win Enterprise
- OpenAI rehired Brett Zoff to lead enterprise sales as it fights slipping market share to competitors like Anthropic.
- Jaeden Schafer frames this as a 2026 growth priority to regain enterprise customers.
Enterprise Market Share Is Slipping
- OpenAI's enterprise LLM usage fell from ~50% in 2023 to ~27% by end of 2025, with Anthropic near 40%.
- Schafer cites this decline as a core reason OpenAI is prioritizing enterprise growth and partnerships.
Voice Infrastructure Became A Unicorn
- LiveKit hit unicorn status after powering ChatGPT's voice mode and raising $100M at a $1B valuation.
- Schafer highlights voice infrastructure as an increasingly valuable layer in the AI stack.