🎯 Google CEO Questions OpenAI Move

OpenAI loses sales chief while AlphaChip founders raise $4B

January 28, 2026

Reading time: 5 minutes

🗞️In this edition

  • DeepMind CEO Says OpenAI Added Ads Too Early

  • OpenAI Sales Chief Quits to Become AI Investor

  • Google AlphaChip Founders Raise $300M at $4B Valuation

  • In other AI news –

    • AI Entrepreneur Sold Company for $575M, Now Targets Human Cells

    • Nvidia Invests Another $2B in CoreWeave, Raising Bubble Concerns

    • Saudi Aramco Backs AI Chip Networking Startup With $200M

  • 4 must-try AI tools

Three moves this week that reveal cracks in the narrative.

One CEO publicly questioned a competitor's strategy in ways executives rarely do. A key leader who built a major sales operation left to fund rivals. And two founders raised billions for a two-month-old company based purely on their previous work.

Each story shows something about confidence and timing. About saying the quiet part out loud. About leaving when you've proven the hard part works. About investors betting on people over products.

The pattern is exits, criticism, and extraordinary valuations happening faster than usual.

This edition looks at what's being said and unsaid when insiders move on.

What's happening:

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said at Davos he was "surprised" OpenAI is testing ads in ChatGPT so early. "It's interesting they've gone for that so early," he told reporters at the World Economic Forum.

Hassabis added that OpenAI might feel pressure to boost revenue. He made clear Gemini has no plans for advertising. The comments came days after OpenAI announced it will test ads in ChatGPT's free and Go tiers.

OpenAI is preparing for an IPO possibly in 2027 at an $830 billion valuation. But the company is burning money fast. It burned $8 billion in 2025 while generating $13 billion in revenue.

Deutsche Bank projects OpenAI could lose $143 billion before reaching profitability. Investor George Noble said OpenAI is "falling apart in real time" despite its valuation.

Why this is important:

Hassabis publicly questioning OpenAI's strategy is rare. Google and OpenAI compete directly. But CEOs usually don't criticize each other's business decisions in public.

The "too early" comment suggests OpenAI is desperate for revenue. Ads come after subscriptions failed to cover costs. That looks weak, not strategic.

Gemini staying ad-free becomes a selling point. Hassabis is positioning Google as the company that doesn't need ads because their business model works. That's a dig at OpenAI's finances.

OpenAI's IPO depends on showing a path to profit. Adding ads while losing billions sends mixed signals. Either the technology prints money or it needs ads to survive. It can't be both.

What's happening:

Aliisa Rosenthal, OpenAI's first commercial hire and former head of sales, is joining venture capital firm Acrew. She joined OpenAI in June 2022 when there were only a couple sales reps and no real product to sell. ChatGPT launched six months later.

Rosenthal built OpenAI's sales team from 15 people to 150 in two years. She met with thousands of companies and still calls herself an "AGI sherpa" helping customers navigate scary new technology.

At Acrew, she'll invest in enterprise AI application startups. Rosenthal believes there's massive opportunity because OpenAI can't build everything. "OpenAI is both a consumer and an enterprise company. It's unlikely they can really cover the entire enterprise application ecosystem," she told Fortune.

She says selling AI isn't like selling software. It's selling technology people don't understand and are scared of. That requires overcoming fear first, then explaining features second.

Why this is important:

OpenAI's first commercial employee leaving signals something about the company's direction. When the person who built your sales team exits after ChatGPT's success, that's notable timing.

Rosenthal will fund startups competing with or building on OpenAI. She knows which enterprise problems OpenAI isn't solving because she saw them while working there. That's insider knowledge turned into investment strategy.

The "AGI sherpa" language reveals how OpenAI sold its product. The team didn't use quotas or commissions. They positioned themselves as guides through "a once-in-a-generation technological shift," not salespeople.

This move follows a pattern. Former OpenAI employees are launching startups, joining competitors, or entering VC. Rosenthal joining VC means she thinks backing AI companies beats working at one.

Comments from the editor:

"AGI sherpa" is marketing language for sales. Calling yourself a guide helping scared customers sounds noble. You're still selling a product.

OpenAI's sales team having no quotas or commission sounds unusual. But when demand outpaces supply, you don't need incentives. You just take orders. That changes when competition arrives.

Rosenthal saying OpenAI can't cover the entire enterprise ecosystem is true. But it also sets up her VC pitch: "I know where the gaps are, fund my portfolio companies to fill them."

The timing is interesting. She joined before ChatGPT existed and leaves after building a 150-person team. That's getting out after the hard work of proving product-market fit is done.

What's happening:

Ricursive Intelligence raised $300 million at a $4 billion valuation just two months after launching. Lightspeed led the Series A with Nvidia, DST Global, Sequoia, and others investing.

The startup was founded by Anna Goldie and Azalia Mirhoseini, who created Google's AlphaChip. AlphaChip uses AI to design chip layouts in hours instead of weeks. Google used it for four generations of TPU chips that power Gemini.

Ricursive wants to automate the entire chip design process. Right now, designing cutting-edge AI chips takes 2-3 years and costs $450-650 million. The company says it can compress that timeline drastically.

The idea is creating a loop where AI designs better chips, those chips make better AI, which designs even better chips. The founders call this "recursive self-improvement" toward AGI.

Why this is important:

$4 billion for a two-month-old company is extraordinary. But investors are betting on the founders' track record. AlphaChip already works in production at Google and MediaTek.

The semiconductor industry has resisted automation for decades. Synopsys and Cadence dominate chip design software and already deploy their own AI tools. Ricursive needs to prove it's not just better research, but better business.

Chip design is the bottleneck slowing AI progress. If Ricursive cuts development time by 50%, that accelerates every AI company's roadmap. That's why Nvidia invested despite selling chips to competitors.

The $4 billion valuation assumes Ricursive becomes the dominant AI chip design platform. That requires beating entrenched competitors with decades of foundry relationships and customer data. Possible, but far from guaranteed.

  1. Bot Butcher - An anti-spam tool designed to protect your inbox from unwanted messages

  2. TTcare - An AI-powered mobile app that helps pet parents monitor the health of their dogs and cats

  3. Alter AI - A tool that transforms amateur selfies into professional-looking headshots

  4. Convai - A platform to create NPC characters and assets for games

The timing of these moves matters more than the moves themselves.

Criticizing a competitor's monetization publicly. Leaving after building the team that proved the business works. Raising $4 billion before shipping a product.

None of these are normal. They're signs of a market moving so fast that usual rules don't apply. Where criticism is strategic positioning. Where exits signal confidence or concern depending on interpretation.

What matters now is whether the people leaving know something others don't. Or whether rapid movement just looks like progress when it's actually instability.

If you have any feedback for us, please reply and let us know how we did. We're always looking to improve.

How did we like this version?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

Interested in featuring your services with us? Email us at [email protected]