Slack CEO, Denise Multiple sources tell WIRED that Dresser is leaving the company and joining OpenAI as the company’s chief revenue officer. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, Slack’s owner, shared the news of Dresser’s departure in a message to employees on Monday evening.
At OpenAI, Dresser will manage the company’s corporate unit, which is growing dynamically this year. He will report to Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap. He starts next week.
“We are on track to bring AI tools to millions of workers in every industry,” OpenAI CEO of Applications Fidji Simo said in a statement to WIRED. “Denise has led this type of change before, and her experience will help us make AI useful, reliable and accessible for businesses around the world.”
Benioff’s messages show that Dresser has been with Salesforce for 14 years. Prior to becoming CEO, she held a number of leadership positions in Salesforce’s enterprise sales division. She was named CEO in 2023, after previous CEO Lidiane Jones left to become CEO at Bumble. (Jones was CEO of Slack for about a year.)
The company that eventually became Slack was founded in 2009. By 2014, it had become a rapidly growing application for chat and collaboration tools in the workplace. In 2021, the company was acquired by Salesforce for almost $28 billion. Most of Slack’s founders, including co-founders Stewart Butterfield and Cal Henderson, left within a few years of the acquisition. Over time, some of Slack’s operations were absorbed into the larger Salesforce structure and stayed that way reports of culture clashes between employees of a once miniature startup and a corporate giant.
Rob Seaman, Slack’s current chief product officer, will become Slack’s interim CEO, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the leadership changes.
Slack representatives did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment at the time of publication.
During Dresser’s tenure as CEO of Slack, she oversaw the implementation of several large-scale AI features, including AI-generated meeting summaries and integration with Salesforce AI agents. Earlier this year, as Elon Musk took on a prominent role in the U.S. government, Dresser occasionally reached out to X to show support, saying she agreed that federal employees should be required to send bullet-pointed emails about their accomplishments, and sending a “thumbs up” emoji to a post about President Donald Trump signing an executive order authorizing federal agencies to work with Musk’s DOGE.
Paresh Dave and Maxwell Zeff contributed to this report.
Update: 9/12/2025 at 2:00 PM EDT: WIRED has corrected Dresser’s tenure at Slack and Salesforce.