OpenAI Flexes Enterprise Ambitions With Colin Fleming As Business CMO

InnovationCloudOpenAI Flexes Enterprise Ambitions With Colin Fleming As Business CMOByMelody Brue,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Principal Analyst, FinTechfor Moor Insights and StrategyFollow AuthorMay 29, 2026, 05:14pm EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Colin Fleming (center right, in glasses) at a recent ServiceNow event.Colin FlemingOpenAI’s hiring of ServiceNow CMO Colin Fleming to lead its business marketing signals a clear intent: The company plans to compete as a leading enterprise platform and establish a brand on par with the top global technology and services firms.A CMO Directly From The Enterprise TrenchesFleming joins OpenAI after serving for two years as CMO at ServiceNow; before that, he spent more than a decade at Salesforce, where he rose to executive vice president of global marketing. At both companies, he built a reputation for moving B2B marketing away from safe lead-gen content. He focused instead on narrative campaigns that felt cinematic, human and, at times, deliberately provocative.The growing presence of AI in marketing has upped the ante even more. In a recent exchange about how AI is changing the CMO’s job, Fleming told me, “AI can move average work faster, so the standard has to go up. Clarity. Taste. Specificity. Discipline.”Although he called leaving ServiceNow “gut-wrenching,” Fleming is clearly excited about his move to the company that launched the AI boom in 2022. OpenAI’s leadership has made 2026 its pivotal year for prioritizing enterprise, emphasizing that the company’s core challenge is solving for application and product use — not continued model training.In that context, Fleming’s priority is to translate OpenAI’s advanced research and product plans into a clear enterprise narrative ready for boardroom scrutiny, elevating the brand among the world’s top technology and service leaders. Flem...