Contrary to reports: OpenAI will not open an office in Israel, but will expand remote operations

The artificial intelligence giant OpenAI is one of the largest technology companies that does not maintain a development center or business operations in Israel. Until recently, the developer of ChatGPT largely ignored the Israeli market. In contrast, its competitor Anthropic, while also lacking a development center in Israel, employs an Ireland-based representative, Eli Hutoveli, responsible for local market development.

However, it has come to the attention of Globes that in recent weeks, OpenAI has taken steps to upgrade its operations regarding the Israeli market through representatives operating from Europe. The goal is to integrate the company's models into startups and promote the autonomous code generator Codex among developers in Israeli companies.

Sources close to the company state that reports about hiring a manager for local operations from Amazon are incorrect. The company has no plans to open an office in Israel or hire a manager responsible solely for Israeli operations. OpenAI did not respond to inquiries from Globes.

Who will sell AI models to Israel?

Leading the process aimed at expanding OpenAI's operations in Europe and the Middle East, including Israel, is Tricia Thrott, who held a similar position in AWS cloud service operations. Thrott, who leads marketing and sales for startups in the region, is currently engaging with venture capital funds and local high-tech industry figures. She recently led a special online workshop on behalf of OpenAI and Amazon in Israel.

OPEN AI in numbers:

• Expected revenue this year: 41.3 billion dollars

• Expected net loss this year: 14 billion dollars

• Planned valuation for the IPO (postponed to next year): 1 trillion dollars

Thrott has recruited her former colleague, Eliran Ben-David, an Israeli living in London, for a role offering partnerships with OpenAI to startups working with the AWS cloud system. Ben-David's role is not limited to Israel; he will work on behalf of OpenAI with companies across the entire Europe, Middle East, and Africa region.

His role includes encouraging startups to integrate OpenAI's Codex development tools—which compete with Anthropic's Claude Code—on Amazon's Bedrock platform. In a LinkedIn post regarding his move from Amazon to OpenAI, Ben-David wrote: "With Codex and ChatGPT Work already reaching 10 million users, the momentum is clear." Many of OpenAI's business development personnel in the technology sector appear to have come from similar roles at AWS.

The IPO will wait until next year

OpenAI is targeting the business sector with key products, including the GPT 5.6 language model family, which allows companies to build custom models for applications such as transcription, speech, and image or video processing. The company also offers AI agents under the ChatGPT Work brand, competing with Anthropic's "Claude Co-Work," alongside the Codex code generator.

OpenAI remains a loss-making company; with an annual revenue rate of 25 billion dollars as of mid-year, it is expected to finish the year with a net loss of 14 billion dollars. The company planned to go public this year at a 1 trillion dollar valuation but has postponed those plans until next year at the earliest. Notably, Nvidia has committed to providing financial guarantees totaling 250 billion dollars to help finance the construction of server farms in Ohio.

Meanwhile, OpenAI is facing erosion of its market position by Anthropic, particularly in enterprise computing. According to the venture capital fund Menlo Ventures, OpenAI's market share in AI products for the business sector fell from 50% in 2023 to 25% last year, while Anthropic increased its share from 12% to 32% during the same period. In the field of autonomous code generators, Anthropic holds a 42% market share—double that of OpenAI, which stands at 21%.