According to the Financial Times, which cited sources familiar with the matter, the hiring surge is expected to focus on engineering, research, product development and sales, amid growing competition in the AI sector.

The AI giant is also increasing recruitment for specialised roles centred on “technical ambassadorship,” aimed at helping enterprises more effectively deploy and integrate its AI tools.

The expansion comes at a time where the broader technology and telecoms industry is moving in the opposite direction, with a raft of companies, including Amazon, Salesforce, Meta, Ericsson and Oracle, all cutting jobs to improve efficiency.

However, recently, OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman revealed he believes some companies are using AI as an excuse for the wave of layoffs affecting the tech sector.

Although some companies claim they are not replacing workers with AI, the tool has still been mentioned in explanations for these layoffs. However, Altman suggested that AI may be used as a cover for some job cuts that companies were already planning to make.

“I don’t know what the exact percentage is, but there’s some AI washing where people are blaming AI for layoffs that they would otherwise do, and then there’s some real displacement by AI of different kinds of jobs,” he said.

But, despite all these job cuts OpenAI’s expansion indicates that jobs are not simply disappearing, but being reshaped as companies prioritise new technologies.

As hiring is increasingly focused on specialised roles in AI, data and engineering, more routine positions are being reduced, highlighting that companies are building smaller, more skilled teams as they invest more in new technologies.

Additionally, competition in the industry is also driving this industry change, following Altman having reportedly issued an internal “code red” in December, pausing non-core projects and redirecting teams to increase development in response to advances from its competitors including Google’s Gemini.

At the time, Altman stated that the AI giant must boost its flagship model’s personalisation, speed, reliability and expand its coverage of different topics.

The move for the internal emergency is not just internal pressure; it’s external competition, as since launch in December 2022, competitors including Google, Anthropic, Meta and DeepSeek have emerged as strong challengers.