Business Development Lead, Compute Strategy

📋 Description

• • Own partnership opportunities end-to-end—from concept formation and sourcing through evaluation, diligence, internal approval, negotiation, close, and post-close execution—across one or more of the focus areas above.
• • Lead negotiations for complex commercial agreements, balancing cost, speed, and long-term scalability.
• • Build and manage relationships with senior leaders across utilities, real estate developers, colocation and cloud providers, semiconductor and equipment suppliers, financial institutions, and other capital providers.
• • Develop market intelligence to inform OpenAI’s infrastructure roadmap and partnership strategy.
• • Coordinate across engineering, legal, finance, Treasury, and operations to structure agreements that align with technical and business objectives.
• • Represent OpenAI in external forums, conferences, and industry working groups to strengthen our ecosystem presence.
• • Operationalize and establish governance for signed agreements; track delivery, risks, economics, and business impact against commercial and technical objectives.
• • You will focus on building partnerships and executing deals in one or more of the following areas:
• • Energy and Power: securing scalable and sustainable energy supply.
• • Land and Real Estate: identifying and securing strategic sites.
• • Colocation: evaluating and contracting for third-party data center capacity.
• • Cloud Service Providers (CSPs): structuring partnerships with hyperscalers and specialized AI cloud providers.
• • Silicon: building semiconductor partnerships to secure advanced silicon and resilient long-term supply.
• • Fiber & Equipment: securing fiber & critical data center equipment from strategic suppliers.
• • Capital Markets: partnering with Finance, Treasury, and capital providers to develop financing solutions for large-scale compute infrastructure investments.
• • You might thrive in this role if you:
• • Have 8+ years of experience in business development, strategic partnerships, private equity, corporate development, project development, or infrastructure finance, with relevant experience in at least one focus area above.
• • Have a demonstrated track record of closing complex, high-value commercial agreements.
• • Bring deep expertise in at least one of the focus areas above, with the ability to translate technical requirements and constraints into commercial structures and contract terms.
• • Possess exceptional negotiation and relationship management skills with the ability to engage C-level stakeholders.
• • Have strong analytical skills to assess market opportunities, model deal structures, and evaluate long-term ROI.
• • Are comfortable navigating ambiguity in a fast-moving environment.
• • Hold a JD, MBA, or equivalent experience is preferred but not required.
• • We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.
• • For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf.
• • Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates.
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• • We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link https://form.asana.com/?k=bQ7w9h3iexRlicUdWRiwvg&d=57018692298241.
• • OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy https://cdn.openai.com/policies/global-employee-and-contractor-privacy-policy.pdf
• • At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.