OpenAI poaches another SpaceX sales lead for cybersecurity business

By Carmen Arroyo

OpenAI has hired SpaceX’s Graham Seamans to lead sales for the firm’s cybersecurity business, the latest in a string of hires from Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence venture. 

Seamans, who had led xAI’s sales team since August 2025 and was part of the firm’s renewed push to sell the Grok chatbot to Wall Street, said he’s joining the developer behind ChatGPT to work on the cyber team. Seamans is the latest sales executive who OpenAI has hired from SpaceX’s AI units. Before joining xAI last year, Seamans had worked at MongoDB Inc. for about eight years, according to his LinkedIn.

Since September, OpenAI has also hired Brian McCarthy and Ismail Elmas in Europe, both of whom had worked for coding automation startup Cursor, which was acquired by SpaceX for $60 billion in August. OpenAI has also hired other staffers from SpaceX’s AI compute team, including Uday Ruddarraju and Brent Mayo. 

OpenAI is trying to expand its commercial reach by boosting sales from enterprise customers and creating new revenue sources such as advertising ahead of a potential public listing. Musk lost a lawsuit against OpenAI, which he helped form, arguing that the AI lab betrayed its mission to the public by changing to a for-profit business. He started a competing AI developer, xAI, which he then merged with SpaceX.

OpenAI declined to comment.