OpenAI, the company revolutionizing artificial intelligence, paradoxically relies on Slack as its central nervous system, with COO Brad Lightcap declaring them the platform’s “most active users” and former engineers stating “everything runs on Slack.”
In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, the irony isn’t lost on many: the company at the forefront of this revolution, OpenAI, heavily leans on a classic workplace tool—Slack. While AI companies promise to radically alter how we work, from automating tasks to reimagining communication, OpenAI‘s COO Brad Lightcap has revealed that their internal operations are powered by an old faithful.
On Fortune’s “Term Sheet” podcast, Lightcap made a bold claim: “We are probably the world’s most active users of Slack internally at OpenAI.” This statement underscores a fascinating dynamic within the tech giant, suggesting that even the pioneers of advanced AI find indispensable value in established Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms.
A Culture Built on Slack, Not Email
The reliance on Slack isn’t just a preference; it’s deeply embedded in OpenAI‘s operational culture. Former OpenAI engineer Calvin French-Owen famously described the company’s communication landscape in a July blog post, stating, “An unusual part of OpenAI is that everything, and I mean everything, runs on Slack.” He even joked about receiving only around ten emails during his entire tenure at the company. This stark contrast to typical corporate communication highlights a deliberate strategy to centralize discussions and workflows.
For a company that has scaled rapidly, reaching a valuation of $90 billion and generating over $2 billion in revenue, this commitment to a single communication hub is significant. OpenAI‘s embrace of Slack facilitates real-time collaboration, knowledge sharing, and quick decision-making, which are crucial for a fast-paced research and deployment company.
Slack Connect: Bridging the Gap with Customers
OpenAI‘s usage of Slack extends beyond internal teams; it’s a critical tool for customer engagement. The company leverages Slack Connect to collaborate directly with customers, moving conversations from cluttered inboxes into interactive channels. Since becoming a Slack customer in 2018, OpenAI has established over 170 Slack Connect channels and exchanged more than five million messages.
Anna Tifft, an Account Manager at OpenAI, emphasizes the efficiency gained through this approach. She explains that Slack Connect removes her as a bottleneck, allowing her to quickly involve colleagues who can provide faster or more accurate answers to customer inquiries. This direct, channel-based collaboration ensures customer needs are met with agility and expertise.
The Enduring Role of Canonical SaaS Systems
While OpenAI is innovating with its own workplace suite, including an inbound sales assistant and contract searcher, Lightcap confirms that these new tools complement existing SaaS stalwarts rather than replacing them. “We use kind of all the canonical SaaS systems you can think of,” Lightcap stated. “These are really, really important systems for OpenAI, and I think they’re going to be really, really enduring and important systems for a while.”
This includes Salesforce, which acquired Slack in 2020 for $27.7 billion. OpenAI’s sales team, for instance, heavily relies on Salesforce for its operations. The integration of data from Service Cloud and Sales Cloud into Slack offers OpenAI a comprehensive 360-degree view of the customer, directly within their primary communication platform. This holistic environment, as described by Tifft, is critical for seamless customer interactions.
AI’s Place: Living in the Cracks of Workflow
The question naturally arises: if AI isn’t replacing these established tools, where does it fit into OpenAI‘s workflow? Lightcap provides a clear vision, suggesting that AI can “live in the cracks” within these existing systems and their workflows. The goal is to enhance speed and efficiency, making everyone work faster by embedding AI capabilities directly into the tools people already use.
OpenAI engineers are already exploring ways to automate work within Slack, finding it easy and fun to build capabilities directly into the chat interface. This demonstrates a practical application of AI to augment human productivity within familiar environments, rather than disrupting them entirely. The focus is on improving the workflow and interconnectedness of organizations, signaling a powerful future for AI and collaboration tools.
Fostering Internal Culture and Asynchronous Work
Beyond external communication, Slack plays a pivotal role in strengthening OpenAI‘s internal culture, especially with employees distributed across different time zones. Boris Power, a Principal Research Engineer, highlights how Slack helps foster a sense of connection across the organization. For asynchronous work, Slack is invaluable, reducing the need for excessive meetings and allowing flexible participation in discussions through threads and channels.
The team extensively uses Slack Huddles for quick audio or video collaborations, enabling spontaneous discussions without scheduling formal meetings. Emojis also serve as a lightweight yet effective communication tool, indicating message reads, work in progress, or simply offering encouragement. Moreover, OpenAI uses reaction emojis to collect feedback on its models, allowing internal teams or customers to use “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” reactions for rapid data collection, which helps models learn and improve over time.
Security is paramount for OpenAI, and their use of Slack’s Enterprise Grid ensures robust protection. This includes features like message retention, granular admin controls, data encryption, and SAML-based single sign-on, providing a secure environment for sensitive communications and development work.
The enduring partnership between OpenAI, Salesforce, and Slack points towards a future where sophisticated AI models seamlessly integrate with powerful collaboration platforms. As Brad Lightcap articulates, the idea of marrying OpenAI’s models with these systems to improve collaboration, information navigation, and understanding is “really powerful.” This collaborative vision positions AI not as a replacement, but as an intelligent amplifier for the tools that already drive modern workplaces. For more insights into OpenAI’s operational strategies, see the detailed report by Business Insider and Slack’s official customer story.
