OpenAI on Thursday announced Frontier, a new enterprise platform designed to help companies deploy, manage, and coordinate AI agents across their internal systems. The platform, which OpenAI says will initially roll out to a small group of customers before broader availability in the coming months, acts as an intelligence layer that connects siloed enterprise data, applications, and workflows so AI agents can operate inside businesses without requiring major infrastructure changes.
Frontier is OpenAI’s most explicit move yet to separate its enterprise ambitions from its consumer products. While tools like ChatGPT Enterprise focus on secure access to models, Frontier is positioned as a system-level layer for running agents as operational teammates — tools that can reason over internal data, use software, run code, and complete multi-step tasks on behalf of employees. OpenAI executives framed the platform as a response to what they see as a missing piece in enterprise AI adoption: a simple way to put agents to work inside real business environments.
“Frontier is really a recognition that we’re not going to build everything ourselves,” Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of Applications, said during a press briefing. She emphasized that the platform is designed to support agents built by OpenAI, by customers themselves, and by third parties — including competitors such as Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic — reflecting the company’s view that enterprises will rely on mixed AI ecosystems rather than a single vendor.
The launch underscores how sharply enterprise AI needs have diverged from consumer use cases. Many large organizations have discovered that general-purpose AI tools struggle with the realities of corporate environments, where data lives across ticketing systems, internal apps, and warehouses, and where security, compliance, and performance requirements are non-negotiable. Frontier is meant to address that gap by giving agents access to a shared business context, allowing them to reason across systems rather than operate in isolation.
Denise Dresser, OpenAI’s chief revenue officer, said Frontier is aimed at helping companies deploy agents “without the need to rework everything underneath.” Built-in tools for evaluating and optimizing agent performance are intended to make it easier for enterprises to monitor how agents behave and improve them over time — a key requirement for organizations that need predictable and auditable systems.
The timing reflects OpenAI’s growing reliance on enterprise customers. The company said in November that more than one million businesses worldwide use its technology, and CFO Sarah Friar recently told CNBC that enterprise customers account for roughly 40% of OpenAI’s business — a figure she expects to rise to about half by the end of the year. Frontier is described as complementary to existing offerings such as ChatGPT Enterprise, rather than a replacement.
Barret Zoph, OpenAI’s general manager of business-to-business, described the shift more bluntly. “What we’re fundamentally doing is basically transitioning agents into true AI co-workers,” he said. Zoph rejoined OpenAI in January after leaving Thinking Machines Lab, the startup he co-founded with former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati.
Initial Frontier customers include Uber, State Farm, Intuit, and Thermo Fisher Scientific. OpenAI declined to disclose pricing details, but said broader access will follow after the early rollout.
Strategically, Frontier signals that OpenAI is betting enterprise differentiation will come less from raw model performance and more from orchestration, integration, and operational control. As competing frontier models continue to converge in capability, the company appears to be positioning itself as the platform that helps businesses actually put those models to work — even if they’re not all OpenAI’s.
Whether that approach succeeds will depend on execution. Enterprise buyers will judge Frontier not on ambition, but on reliability, governance, and how easily agents can be deployed inside complex organizations. If OpenAI can deliver on those requirements, Frontier could become a cornerstone of its enterprise strategy — and a meaningful shift in how AI agents move from experiments to everyday business infrastructure.
This analysis is based on reporting from CNBC.
Image courtesy of Unsplash.
This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.
