OpenAI Unveils Frontier to Help You Build AI Co-Workers

OpenAI on Thursday announced Frontier, a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform that helps companies build, deploy and manage AI agents which, at face value, seems very similar to the agent platforms companies like Salesforce and Workday have built recently. Frontier works with OpenAI’s previously announced AI agent-building tools and makes it easier for businesses to combine sources of data that agents need to perform tasks, the AI company said. The agents will be able to process information from various sources and complete tasks like working with files and running code, OpenAI said.

In a call with reporters, OpenAI CEO of Applications Fidji Simo described the agents as “AI co-workers” that can collaborate with humans and be used alongside agents developed by OpenAI competitors like Anthropic and Microsoft.

“By the end of the year, most digital work in leading enterprises will be directed by people and executed by fleets of agents. This is already true for coding, and it’s going to happen for many other areas, too,” Simo said.

The company didn’t disclose how much it will charge users for Frontier, which is currently available to a limited set of customers.

OpenAI’s news comes after software stocks ranging from PayPal to Expedia and Intuit plunged over 10% Tuesday afternoon - wiping over $300 billion off software and data stocks. The response was largely because of investor fears that AI-driven disruption will reduce the need for traditional software tools.

Both OpenAI and Anthropic released new products earlier this week that helped spark the software rout. Anthropic recently expanded the capabilities of its Cowork assistant, powered by Claude, with new plug-ins that perform specialized business functions, including one for the legal sector. OpenAI on Monday released a new version of its coding tool Codex that operates in a way similar to the apps that Anthropic is building into Claude.

In contrast, OpenAI’s Simo said the release of Frontier is “excellent news for the software sector” because it isn’t meant to replace existing software tools. Instead, Frontier will serve as a way for companies to distribute their own AI agents, she said.

“We’re not going to build every single AI agent that companies need,” Simo said. “That’s why we have built the platform in a way where all these software companies can deploy their agents on top of us.”

Some of those players could include OpenAI-backer Microsoft, Oracle and SAP - all of which offer their own specialized AI agents designed to automate business processes. Those companies can have their agents adopted through OpenAI’s Frontier, according to OpenAI, and serve as sources of business data that custom-built agents need to run on.

For the OpenAI agents to work in certain cases, they will need to pull in customer data from customer-relationship-management systems like Salesforce, and content from messaging apps like Slack, Simo said.

OpenAI has also struck deals with companies like ServiceNow to directly integrate its AI models into the business software maker’s AI agents. The company said some of Frontier’s initial customers include Intuit, State Farm, Thermo Fisher and Uber. Dozens of other OpenAI clients are testing the product.

The release of Frontier is also aimed at helping OpenAI attract more businesses as it competes with Anthropic, Google and other rivals for corporate customers. By making Frontier a sort of standard for building and managing AI agents, whether developed by OpenAI or not, the company’s goal is to bring more business clients into its overall AI ecosystem.

The San Francisco-based AI lab is laying the groundwork for a public listing in the fourth quarter of this year, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

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How has the introduction of OpenAI’s Frontier platform impacted the global software market and the future of enterprise work? The launch of Frontier caused software stocks to plunge by over 10% as investors fear AI-driven disruption will replace traditional tools; the platform enables AI co-workers to collaborate with humans, with projections that fleets of agents will direct most digital work in leading enterprises by the end of the year.