Denise Dresser left OpenAI. She ran revenue. The company burns through investor cash faster than a pension fund chasing meme stocks. Her job was to find a business model that doesn't collapse when someone realizes ChatGPT costs more to run than it makes.
This is the second executive to bail in days. The rats are leaving the ship. Except the ship is valued at $80 billion and has never turned a profit. Wall Street calls this a "growth story." Normal people call it a Ponzi scheme with better marketing.
OpenAI wants an IPO. They need a blockbuster one, apparently. Because nothing says "invest your retirement savings here" like watching the revenue chief sprint for the exit right before the roadshow. Dresser saw the cap table, looked at the burn rate, and decided her resume would look better if she left before the SEC started asking questions.
Retail traders will line up to buy shares anyway. They always do. These are the same people who thought Peloton was the future of fitness and that SPACs were free money. They'll see "AI" in the prospectus and empty their checking accounts faster than you can say "fiduciary duty."
The company makes a chatbot that hallucinates legal citations and a image generator that can't spell. The path to profitability involves convincing every corporation on earth to pay $20 per employee per month for a tool that writes emails worse than the intern. Good luck with that.
Dresser's replacement will be announced soon. They'll say all the right things about growth and innovation and market opportunity. Then they'll update their LinkedIn profile to "open to work" six months later when they realize the only revenue model is "beg Microsoft for more money."
The IPO will probably happen anyway. Valuations don't require revenue anymore. They just require a story stupid enough that retail believes it.
Photo by Brecht Corbeel on Unsplash
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