OpenAI Taps Former Google Cloud Lead for Partnerships Role

Former Google Cloud channel executive Colleen Kapase has joined OpenAI as VP of strategic global partnerships and ecosystems, bringing a seasoned partner leader to the AI vendor as it expands its enterprise go-to-market efforts. 

Kapase disclosed the move Tuesday after leaving Google Cloud in March, where she led channel partnerships during a broader revamp of the hyperscaler’s partner program.

Colleen Kapase brings deep channel leadership experience

Kapase announced her role in a LinkedIn post, in which she touted OpenAI’s market dominance, citing its flagship ChatGPT models. 

“Bringing value to enterprise customers through a vibrant, profitable and strategic ecosystem is my super power. But this time I’m thinking differently than ever before. This time we will harness the power of AI to support, inform, train and engage with partners. Together we will sharpen new skills and build value for customers that will produce wonder and true ROI,” Kapase’s post read on Tuesday.

As she noted later in her post, building channel programs and global alliance ecosystems is nothing new to Kapase, who, prior to her stint at Google Cloud, also led the partner teams at Snowflake, VMware, and Citrix, among others.

Google Cloud moves forward with former Microsoft leader

Kapase departed Google Cloud in March after shepherding the company through a revamped partner program experience.

In January, she told Channel Insider the program was designed to enable partners to bring differentiated services to the market as AI, among other things, pushed demand to do more with less.

Google Cloud announced at the time of Kapase’s departure that her role would be filled by David Smith, the former worldwide channel sales leader at hyperscaler rival Microsoft. Smith has already begun leading the program and working with Google Cloud’s massive partner ecosystem.

OpenAI adds partner leadership as rivals expand channel strategies

OpenAI’s expansion of its go-to-market, which Kapase said in her LinkedIn post includes sales, marketing, operations, and a partner engine, comes a few weeks after the creator of Claude, Anthropic, announced its own massive investment in the channel as a growth engine.

The Claude Partner Network was formally launched in March, with an early partner list that included Accenture, Deloitte, PwC, and others. 

Anthropic used the same announcement to share that it has committed $100 million to support its partners through training programs, certifications, technical support, and joint sales efforts.

As we’ve reported throughout 2026 and much of 2025, AI investment from SMBs all the way to enterprise spend continues to flow through the IT channel.

To learn more about the broader AI market, we invited the hosts of our sister podcast, The Neuron, to join us on Channel Insider: Partner POV.

Hyperscalers increase pressure on partners to drive enterprise AI adoption

While OpenAI and Anthropic are just beginning their work with partner programs, established competitors like Microsoft are doubling down on partner incentive programs tied to AI tool adoption. 

Microsoft’s March announcement of the new M365 E7 tier shows just how deep the giant aims to go with partners and their end customers in terms of environment-wide AI licensing.

The star of that package is Copilot Cowork, an answer in many ways to Anthropic’s Claude Cowork, both of which promise users agentic workflows that can independently handle routine tasks.

Google Cloud and AWS are also investing heavily in agentic and generative AI across their vast portfolios of offerings, and leaning on partners to scale adoption as well.

“I think Google’s doing something really smart with how it’s focusing on supporting enterprise customers on the business side,” Blair Sammons, the director of solutions at Google Premier Partner Promevo, told us last year.

“It’s hard to overstate how deep Google’s expertise in these areas really goes,” he continued. “Google is to AI what Apple is to the phone, in many ways. They’ve got the whole ecosystem internally.”

MSPs and solution providers weigh the next phase of AI services

Some MSPs have jumped on the AI train early, with companies like Thrive and Blue Mantis building AI services into their portfolios, and new entrants to the market establishing themselves as AI-native to attract forward-thinking customers. 

At the same time, many partners are still determining the best path forward in this AI market, as customers seek efficiency gains sometimes at the expense of security and governance, and still too often without the proper underlying technology and data infrastructure in place.

As the market and the channel partners driving the purchasing within it continue to evolve alongside AI tooling, it’s clear that virtually every player in the space is beginning to bet its future on the channel.