OpenAI Hires First Chief Marketing Officer, Kate Rouch, from Coinbase
OpenAI has appointed Kate Rouch, former global marketing and public relations lead at Coinbase, as its first chief marketing officer. Rouch joins OpenAI from Coinbase, where she led global marketing and public relations efforts since August 2021, overseeing the company’s Super Bowl ads. Prior to Coinbase, she spent over 11 years at Meta, holding roles such as global head of brand and product marketing for Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook.
Rouch is set to begin her new role on Monday, marking OpenAI’s first significant investment in marketing. The company’s valuation has skyrocketed to $157 billion in just two years since the launch of ChatGPT, with $13 billion raised from Microsoft along the way. OpenAI has achieved impressive user numbers, reaching 250 million weekly active users and over 1 million paying business customers, despite minimal marketing efforts to date.
The appointment of Rouch comes as OpenAI faces increasing competition in the generative artificial intelligence market. The company is now locked in a battle with Anthropic, the developer of the Claude chatbot, as well as tech giants Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta. The market is predicted to reach $1 trillion in revenue within a decade, making it a prime target for these companies.
In a recent development, OpenAI announced that it will allow employees to sell approximately $1.5 billion worth of shares in a new tender offer to SoftBank.