VC Partnerships Lead, APAC

About the team OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. This long-term undertaking brings together the world’s best scientists, engineers, and business professionals into one organization. In pursuit of this mission, our Go To Market (GTM) team is responsible for helping customers learn how to leverage and deploy our highly capable AI products across their business. The team is made of Sales, Solutions, Support, Marketing, and Partnership professionals that work together to create valuable solutions that will help bring AI to as many users as possible. About the role OpenAI is seeking a VC Partnerships Lead to join our Startups team in Asia-Pacific. In this role, you will build and manage senior relationships with leading venture capital funds, accelerators, and startup ecosystem partners, with the goal of helping high-potential startups adopt and scale with OpenAI’s products. Many of the most important AI-native companies will be built by startups. You will work with investors, founders, and internal OpenAI teams to identify promising companies, support their technical and commercial success, and create repeatable programs that expand OpenAI’s reach across the regional startup ecosystem. Success in this role requires a distinctive combination of ecosystem credibility, commercial judgment, technical fluency, and operational rigor. You should be comfortable working with founders and investors, designing scalable partner programs, and traveling frequently across the Asia-Pacific region. In this role, you will: - Manage and develop a set of partner-level relationships with top venture capital funds, startup accelerator programs, and other partners in the startup ecosystem - Be responsible for adoption and revenue growth for OpenAI’s APIs and applications (e.g. Codex), especially across early-stage companies - Work closely with Account Directors to identify and serve high-potential startups - Collaborate cross-functionally to design and execute 1:1, 1:few, and 1:many technical engagements with startup teams - Represent OpenAI at startup ecosystem events and speaking engagements - Develop insights into trends in startup ecosystems based on quantitative metrics and qualitative observations - Lead programmatic engagement of “long tail” early-stage companies - Serve as an advocate for improving the startup experience building with OpenAI, synthesizing product feedback from insights captured from our work with startups We're seeking someone with: - Passion for the startup ecosystem and supporting the growth of fast-growing companies - Experience owning revenue and other business outcomes - Background as a founder of a venture-backed startup, a venture capital investor, or early employee at a fast-growing startup - Technical understanding of AI technologies and AI product landscape - 10+ years experience managing high-value external relationships (e.g., customers, partners, investors, Board of Directors) and working directly with founders and C-level executives - Communicating technical concepts to customers and internal stakeholders - Leading high-visibility customer engagements (e.g., conferences, 1:many events, product launches, etc.) - High degree of comfort for gathering, distilling, and processing complex market (industry, competitor, customer, prospect) intelligence - Strong public speaking ability - Experience navigating different cultures and ecosystems, spanning everything between Japan, New Zealand, and Kazakhstan - [Strongly preferred] Professional proficiency in at least one relevant regional business language, such as Mandarin, Japanese, or Korean You might thrive in this role if you: - Are customer- and partner-centric. You are motivated to deeply understand customer and partner priorities and help them achieve their vision. You build strong relationships with executives and professionals across functions and serve as a trusted advisor. - Have a passion or deep curiosity