AI Firms Hunt For CMOs

Before we get to our main item of the day, a note to readers to tune in here tomorrow for reactions to Google’s Gemini 2.0 large language model, which was announced this morning.

Now onto our main item…

Artificial intelligence developers are realizing they need help standing out in an increasingly crowded market.

OpenAI last week hired Kate Rouch to be its first chief marketing officer. You could argue Rouch was something of a perfect candidate for the role—she comes to OpenAI after three years at Coinbase, another company that helped create a new sector and where Rouch was also the first CMO.

Rouch’s hiring points to a trend of AI developers recruiting marketing executives. AI21, Writer, Jasper and Weka have also hired their first CMOs since June.