OpenAI is planning a significant expansion of its workforce as it accelerates efforts to jostle to the head of the enterprise AI market, according to a report from FT Tech.

The company allegedly intends to nearly double its headcount to around 8,000 employees, up from approximately 4,500, as it pushes to scale its products for business customers and fend off intensifying competition. The hiring drive is expected to focus largely on product development, engineering, research and sales.

The move to spike the firm’s headcount comes amid an intensifying race between major AI developers to secure corporate customers, particularly in areas such as coding assistants and productivity tools. Companies including Anthropic and Google are continuing to gain traction in this space, with OpenAI moving to strengthen its offering in response. In fact, Anthropic, the maker of Claude AI  has seen business adoption grow 4.9% month over month.

As part of its growth plans, OpenAI has taken on additional office space in San Francisco, bringing its total footprint in the city to more than 1 million square feet.

The recruitment push forms part of a wider strategic overhaul, as OpenAI looks to counter momentum from rivals. While ChatGPT remains the most widely used consumer AI application, a large majority of its user base does not currently generate revenue, increasing pressure to monetise its tech.

In response, OpenAI is placing greater emphasis on enterprise use cases and revenue generation. By the end of the year, it expects business customers to account for roughly half of its overall revenue, up from around 40% today.

While OpenAI still leads in business adoption with a 34.4% share, Anthropic has been closing the gap, now accounting for around 24.4% of businesses using AI, with adoption growing at 4.9% month on month. Google has also recorded a 4.7% increase in adoption over the same period, albeit from a smaller base, while other competitors such as xAI remain used by less than 2% of businesses.

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The shift towards enterprise customers is also reflected in OpenAI’s evolving product strategy. Earlier this month, Fidji Simo, who runs OpenAI’s applications business, urged staff to ditch “side quests” and instead focus on improving the company’s coding model Codex, winning over business customers and transforming ChatGPT into a productivity tool.

Simo is also overseeing the bundling of Codex and ChatGPT into a single desktop app which can be sold to consumers and businesses, as the company looks to streamline its offering and improve usability across segments.

Despite rapid growth and increasing adoption, both OpenAI and its rivals continue to operate at a loss, investing heavily in the development and training of advanced AI models. As competition intensifies and the cost of development remains high, pressure is mounting on leading AI firms to reduce costs, increase revenues and move towards profitability, particularly as many prepare for potential public listings in the near future.