Brad LightCap Openai leads global expansion, the pursuit of the enterprise

Sam Altman Need anyone to manage finances. It was 2018, and Openai was still a non -profit scientific clothing with 40 employees, without a consumer product and without a clear profit model. But someone had to watch the money.

Altman asked Brad Lattop, with whom he worked on the starting accelerator Y Combinator to help him search. LightCap interviewed more than 20 people. Nobody wanted a job. So, LightCap decided to do so by joining the temporary role as the first business rental was that it was still unmistakably the laboratory.

“We have no idea, we are going to make a chat, with which many people are going to talk to,” Altman said at the San Francisco, who was also attended by Lightcap at the dinner with journalists. “It was just not in conception.”

Seven years after joining the charged startup, LightCap is a $ 500 billion startup head with $ 3,000. Its task – turn around Openai with a consumer phenomenon known for creating a chat and a generative ah -boom, because of the enterprise.

This week, the company has taken a big step in this direction, announcing new offices in Brazil, Australia and India in response to the demand for business.

As it goes to new markets, LightCap should not worry about creating a brand. Chatgpt now boasts more than 700 million active users in less than three years.

But the sale at the enterprise requires bodies. Over the last 18 months, LightCap has built an Openai market from about 50 people to more than 700, which includes sales and staff focused on customer success, developers’ attitudes and strategic partnerships.

The onslaught began in 2023 with GPT-4 and launching chatgpt enterprise. Businesses suddenly could see that large Openai linguistic models are able to solve the work process securely. Customers began to come from all directions.

“It was the first time you cross the chasm of models that are reasonable enough to actually solve business problems,” the 34 -year LightCap said this week. “We have seen a considerable demand that is coming out of this launch.”

Modern undertake Using Chatgpt Enterprise To accelerate drug detection and summing up a large amount of research data. Uber Created a custom tool that allowed engineering teams to press on Openai models to support customers, driver experience and internal performance. Morgan Stanley First built-in GPT-4 into workflows in its rich management team and later expanded integration into Investment Banking and Trade.

“I see our responsibility for both the construction of tools and in some sense, the most experienced people in the world about how to expand them,” Lightcap said. “We took this seriously since the first day.”

Continue Openai does not count on traditional sales representatives. Instead, its strategy goes to the market, greatly relies on engineers who work directly with corporate partners to provide models to decide real business problems.

Playing the central role in global development for one of the fastest growing Silicon Valley businesses, LightCap must also manage a sensitive relationship with the closest Openai and the new competitor Microsoft.

Microsoft is an investor in Openai, pouring about $ 13 billion into the company and its main cloud supplier. Openaii models tightly built into Microsoft products such as Copilot, and the software giant used its close connections with Openai to offer early access to the tools before they are available on other clouds.

The deeper Openai goes to the sale of businesses, the more companies face.

For companies already operating on Azure, Pitch Microsoft is a seamless integration that comes with the addition of Openai models to the existing stack. But to go directly through Openai offers closeness to the teams that build border technology.

This is not the only market on which they go to the head. In Microsoft’s Annual feed Last year, the company officially listed Openai as a competitor in search and advertising. The disclosure of information landed a few days after Openai introduced a prototype called Searchgpt, emphasizing how quickly the interests of two companies crossed.

And this week Microsoft said it started Public testing A Home Model AI called Mai-1-Preview, which can lead to enhancement for consumers.

LightCap reduced rivalry.

“The opportunity is so giant that it is impossible not to run at all,” he said. He stressed that the key to Openai is the quality of their models, their safety and reliability, and how the company works with customers.

Microsoft did not respond to a comment request.

Both companies are now talking about their partnership conditions, including a split of enterprises, which provides 80% of the Openai revenue when it has customer relationships.

Other tension moments include Openai work with different cloud suppliers collects 40 billion dollars and perestroika into a commercial person.

As Openai expands to new regions, it adapts its approach to the reflection of local demand, benefits and use.

In Brazil, which is now the fastest growing Openai market in Latin America, there are more than 50 million Chatgpt users on a monthly basis, which send about 140 million messages every day. India, which deals with the development of the developer, has become the second largest community of company users around the world. And in Australia, where some of the earliest users of the Openai (API) interface, acts as a center for the adoption of an enterprise in the Asia-Pacific region.

The office of San Paul will double as a training center for teachers, non -profit organizations and small businesses, as well as the community center for the development of Brazil developers.

“There is real energy around II in Brazil,” Lightcap said. “The startups are moving fast, and larger companies are already putting these tools to work. Opening the office here helps us stay near customers and partners and maintain this impetus.”

Openai is hiring locally to enter active ecosystem developers. In Australia, an office in Sydney will serve as a beach head for customers of businesses across the Pacific. And in Japan where the company has already launched a joint venture with Soft banks To deploy corporate instruments across the countryTokyo’s team built to focus on use Like automation, robotics and AI performance.

“My colleagues in Japan have learned a lot about how to actually improve how we go to the market, how to improve the way to provide services for businesses,” LightCap said. “And so it really becomes this bilateral learning process.”

It is not a world light piece that could imagine seven years ago when the young laboratory he joined, operating from a three-story building from a wooden frame in the San Francisian mission.

At dinner in San Francisco, in August, LightCap sat through a table from his boss. He nodded his head as Altman said what life was then short working days.

“We really had a pleasant life,” Altman said. “We were the most intelligent people in the world who were engaged in the most interesting science at the verge of opening, in this great secret.”

. Jordan Novo CNBC has contributed to this report.

See: Sam Altman says Openai pushed a “much warmer” tone for GPT-5