Openair’s Brad Lightcap carries a global expansion, searching for a company

Sam Altman Someone needed to manage finance. It was 2018, and Openai was a non-profit research dress with 40 employees, not a consumer product and a clean pattern of revenue. But someone had to oversee the money.

Altman asked Brad Lightcap, who worked with the speed accelerator Y Combinator to help him with the search. Lightcap interviewed more than 20 people. No one wanted the job. So the light decided to do themselves, assuming a temporary role, it was still not a laboratory.

“We didn’t have a lot of ideas to chat for Chatbot,” Altman said the earlier journalists said this month in San Francisco, the lights also attended. “That was not in the spectacle.”

After seven years after entering the starting point, LightCap is a $ 500 million launch of $ 500 million. It is to become his task From a phenomenon of Openai consumers, it is known for creating the AI ​​Boom creator and the strength of the company.

The company took an important step in that direction this week, announcing new offices in Brazil, Australia and India in response to business demand.

As it enters the new markets, the light does not have to worry about building brand. Chatgpt has more than 700 million active users for less than three years to existence.

But selling the company needs organs. In the last 18 months, Lightcap has built Openai’s market team for about 50 people more than 700, and for sale repetitions and staff are strategic customer relations and strategic cooperation.

Push started in 2023, starting with GPT-4 and Chatgpt company. Businesses suddenly could see that the Language Models of Openi could suddenly handle workflows reliably handling. The customer began to fit into all directions.

“The first time it is to solve problems for intelligent companies,” Lightcap, 34, said in an interview with this week. “We saw an important request to launch”.

Modern When online Using ChatGPT business To speed up drug discovery and summarize extensive amount of research data. Uber He built a personalized tool, engineering teams Openi’s model support for customer support, driver experience and internal productivity. Morgan Stanley The first GPT-4 embedded workflow was extended to its wealth management team and then integration Investment Bank and Trade.

“I see our responsibility to the tools and being, somehow, how the wise people in the world have spread,” the light said. “We took it seriously from the day.”

Openair’s census is not based on regular sales repetitions. Instead, market strategies has shaken many engineers who work directly with business partners to ensure real business problems solve real business problems.

While you are playing in the Global Rapid Growth Business Development of Silicon Valley, LightCap must also manage a sensitive relationship with the closest and enemy of OpenAI. Microsoft.

The main investor in Microsoft Openai is to spill approximately $ 13 million in the company and the main cloud supplier. They are highly integrated into copilota products of Openi’s models.

Openai deeper moves in business sales, and two companies collided.

For companies already underway in Azure, Microsoft’s field Openi’s models is an integration that comes to add existing pile. But by going directly through Openi, the teams that build Frontier technology provides proximity.

The only market they carry out the head. Microsoft Annual archiving Last year, the company listed Openai as a competitor in search and news advertising. Outreach after Openai presents a prototype, emphasizing the interests of both companies.

And this week, Microsoft said it has begun Publicly testing The AI ​​model called Mai-1 preview can lead to improvements to the Cupilota Consumers.

Lightcap fell down to compete.

“The space space is so giant, somehow, it is impossible to go to all the others,” he said. He stressed that Openai’s key is the quality of its models, safety and reliability and how the company works with customers.

Microsoft did not ask for comment.

Both companies are re-negotiating their collaboration requirements, including Enterprise Sales Split, spreads 80% of revenue when the Openai owns the customer relationship.

Other tension points Openi’s work will be with different cloud suppliers and the next growth phase of Openi Has raised $ 40 billion and restructured in a commercial organization.

As Openai spreads in new regions, its vision fits the local demand, preferences and cases of use.

Brazil, the fastest Latin American Openaire in the market, send more than 50 million users every 500 million messages every day. In India, with the exaltable base of developers, it has become the largest second user community around the world. Australia, OPENII’s application of the programming interface (API) is emerging as a business adoption site in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Sao Paulo office will double the educator as a training site for non-profit and small business training, and as a community center for the hard base of Brazil developers.

“There is real energy around Brazil,” Lightcap said. “The starting points are already fast and larger companies to work already. When opening an office, it helps us close customers and partners and protect this momentum.”

Openai is hired to touch the active ecosystems of developers. In Australia, the Sydney office will be beachhead for customers for Pacific customers. And in Japan, the company has already launched a joint venture Soft To kick business tools throughout the nationThe Tokyo Group is structured to focus on personalized use Automation, like robotics and AI productivity.

“My colleagues in Japan also taught us how to improve our market, how to improve the services to companies,” Lightcap said. “And so it becomes a two-way learning process.”

It is not the light of the world that could be imagined seven years ago, when the elusive laboratory entered the three-storey building of the three-storey building in San Francisco.

In August at the San Francisco dinner, the light was sitting on the table. Altman described what kind of life he had, and short business days off the border.

“We really had a nice life,” Altman said. “We were the most interesting people in the world to do the most interesting science in the border of the discovery in this great secret.”

– CNBC’s Jordan Novet helped this report.

See: Sam Altman says Openai made a much hotter tone for GPT-5