Earlier this week, ServiceNow CMO Colin Fleming announced he was leaving ServiceNow for a new role at OpenAI, where he will become Chief Marketing Officer of the Business division.
Fleming was full of praise for his time at ServiceNow, calling it ‘the most meaningful chapter of my career’, and describing the decision as ‘gut-wrenching’. Nonetheless, the offer of a move to OpenAI was clearly one he couldn’t refuse. Of the opportunity, Fleming said ‘I would have regretted not taking the swing’. Perhaps few companies could have tempted him to leave ServiceNow, but OpenAI was one of them.
From ServiceNow to OpenAI
It appears that the growing prominence of AI companies like OpenAI was a huge contributing factor in Fleming’s decision. He said, “Some companies build great products. A few change what people believe is possible. OpenAI is one of those companies.” He went on to say that “The gap between ‘what if?’ and ‘it works’ is getting smaller by the day”.
“Some companies build great products. A few change what people believe is possible.”
Undoubtedly, the loss of Fleming will be keenly felt at ServiceNow HQ. Despite only joining in 2024, he’s made a big impact on the company. In fact, he was recently ranked ninth on Forbes 2025 list of the world’s most influential CMOs.
Before his tenure at ServiceNow, Fleming previously spent 13 years in various marketing roles at Salesforce, culminating in Executive Vice President of Global Marketing between 2022 and 2024. He then joined ServiceNow as EVP and Chief Marketing Officer in May 2024. He went into marketing in 2007 after a five-year career as a professional racing driver.
In response to Fleming’s departure, ServiceNow said to NowBen: “Colin has been a wonderful colleague and CMO at ServiceNow. He has been presented with a unique opportunity to join OpenAI and leaves with our gratitude and warmest wishes. He’ll have ServiceNow as a great partner in his new role.”
In the meantime, ServiceNow says that “Jim Lesser will serve as our interim CMO while we conduct a search. Our strategy is clear. Our market opportunity has never been greater. Our brand has never been stronger.”
A Fleet of High-Profile Departures?
Fleming isn’t the first high-ranking ServiceNow executive to jump ship for AI companies in recent times. Just a few weeks ago, Philip Kirk, VP for Corporate Business Development, left for Databricks. And last year, the company’s President of Global Customer and Field Operations (Paul Smith) left to join Anthropic, along with Vishal Kumar Gupta, who became the company’s Corporate Development Lead.
In May last year, the company also lost senior sales leaders Erica Volini, Executive Vice President, and Ulrik Nehammer, Chairman of the International Business.
A similar trend can be seen in the Salesforce ecosystem, with several high-profile executive departures in recent months, many of whom also subsequently joined AI companies.
While it’s tempting to see a trend here, much of this is just the usual process of executives moving through different companies in their careers. But many will see this as reflective of a broader trend of attention and investment moving away from traditional SaaS companies and toward high-profile AI vendors.
Since the ‘SaaSpocalypse’ has weighed heavily on both ServiceNow and Salesforce’s stock price in recent months, it’s easy to see Fleming’s departure as the latest stage of the AI bandwagon.