Back in 2022, SDRs topped every "jobs AI will replace" list.
Now the hottest AI-native companies are building SDR functions. I’m seeing this clearly in my AI Index (150 top AI companies).
Findings:
39% of those with open GTM roles are hiring SDRs or SDR leaders (18% with leadership titles).
Vast majority are outbound/enterprise focused (~3 outliers)
2x more Enterprise AE roles than SDR roles. Suggests more SDR hiring coming.
SO WHAT?
The battle for the enterprise is heating up (and probably needs humans)
The hot AI companies had crazy success with PLG and prosumer motions. Now it's about enterprise. They want those 7-figure deals and want to get there first (with all the demand coming online so fast).
We can see this clearly in OpenAI's Head of Sales Development post:
"helps the world’s largest companies adopt and scale our AI platform across their business"
"Your mandate is [...] winnable pipeline for our Large Enterprise and Strategic Accounts teams."
There are 2x more Enterprise AE roles than SDR roles at these companies right now. This tells me even more SDR hiring might be coming. You need pipeline to feed those AEs.
I know Jason Lemkin replaced his sales team with 20 agents. But that's event sponsors (straight forward, transactional). If you want to win enterprise, complex sales, multi-threading, multi-product, executive engagement, you probably need humans at least involved to create opps with those 6-7 figure accounts.
The new playbook is being written
Many $100M+ AI companies are forming this function from scratch in 2026.
Clay just hired Rob Cook as Head of BDR. Now they have open roles for "ClayDRs."
Anthropic has an open BDR Manager to "build, lead, and scale a team of 8-12 BDRs."
LangChain has IC sales development roles open, explicitly saying "Hiring our first Sales Development Representatives." A company that has had huge adoption vai open source / PLG and now building an upmarket GTM motion.
CoreWeave is hiring an SDR Director to "lead and scale a high-performing SDR organization, managing a team of SDR managers." They're building the leadership layer before the IC layer.
These aren't backfills. They're building leadership layers to create the function.
These companies have an advantage. They get to work from a blank page. They aren't trying to reduce headcount or reconfigure. Instead they are figuring out the new playbook from scratch. This is going to be a period of learning.
What I’m watching
The function will look different in the AI era. I just can't believe these orgs will run the same Aaron Ross playbook from 2011. The skills, the automation expectations, and the AE/SDR ratios are likely all shifting. That's the interesting thing to watch.
A few things I'm curious about:
How does output (and comp model) change when AI handles more of the manual work?
What skills matter for SDRs at AI-native companies? More technical? More strategic? Something else?
How will ratios and working dynamics with AEs evolve?
I think it's worth watching how these AI companies build GTM, what's different, and what stays the same.
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