OpenAI’s Private Equity Ambitions Grow With Morgan Stanley Executive Hire

OpenAI tapped former Morgan Stanley executive Alisha Lehr for a private equity-focused role, adding an AI-focused banking veteran to the company bench to help expand relationships with investment firms.

Lehr joined OpenAI’s private equity team after nearly nine years at Morgan Stanley, she announced in a post on LinkedIn.

"After a decade on Wall Street, I’m excited to share that I’ve joined OpenAI,” she said. “I’ll be partnering with private equity firms, operating partners, founders, and CEOs on a question that increasingly matters across every portfolio: How do you translate AI’s potential into measurable, durable value? The opportunity goes beyond adopting new tools. It’s about rethinking how companies operate, how teams work, how businesses grow, and where competitive advantage comes from.”

Lehr added that her career has been built at “the intersection of finance, technology, and strategic change.” 

Prior to joining OpenAI, Leher spent nine years as a managing director and chief operating officer for firmwide artificial intelligence, where she helped lead AI initiatives across the firm. Lehr was also the head of market innovation for Morgan Stanley’s Technology Business Development unit and held a prior role at IBM.

OpenAI’s private equity team appears focused on helping investment firms deploy OpenAI agents across their portfolio companies. 

A LinkedIn posting earlier this month for a private equity lead described the role as a client-facing position focused on building relationships with private equity firms and supporting AI deployments. 

OpenAI Hiring Spree

The ChatGPT maker plans to nearly double its workforce to 8,000 from 4,500 by the end of the year, the Financial Times reported. 

Last month, Liz Wamai joined the company as head of recruiting after more than three years at Netflix. Clint Gibler joined as a member of the technical staff and will be working with Michael Aiello, OpenAI’s head of product for cyber. 

Other recent hires include former Ironclad CEO Jason Boehmig, who will lead its product team responsible for building products for the legal industry and  Salesforce AgentExchange CEO Brian Landsman as its vice president of global partnerships.

The company also submitted a confidential draft registration statement on Form S-1 to the SEC, a disclosure the company made in unusually candid fashion.

"We recently submitted a confidential S-1. We expect it to leak so we’re just announcing it," OpenAI said in a statement on its website. 

OpenAI has not decided on timing yet, noting that some objectives are “easier as a private company.”

“But it’s a complicated set of trade-offs, and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best," the statement read.

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