Feb 23 (Reuters) - OpenAI is expanding its push into the enterprise market by teaming up with four of the world’s largest consulting firms, betting that a more hands-on approach will help corporate clients move beyond pilot projects to full-scale AI deployments.
The company said on Monday it had launched the so-called “Frontier Alliance,” a program built around its new Frontier platform and anchored by BCG, McKinsey, Accenture and Capgemini. The initiative pairs OpenAI’s forward-deployed engineers with consulting firms to help companies integrate AI agents into core business processes such as software development, sales and customer support.
The move follows months of Chief Executive Sam Altman emphasizing selling to enterprise clients as a priority for the AI lab. In December, OpenAI hired former Slack CEO Denise Dresser as chief revenue officer.
While OpenAI has previously worked with consulting firms to sell its technology, Dresser said the new partnershipis designed to help companies embed AI into core workflows rather than run isolated experiments.
Enterprises “don't just need caution. They actually need a path, and they need help so that they can grow and adopt this technology,” Dresser said in an interview.
Under the alliance, OpenAI’s engineers will work alongside consulting teams to train staff and support implementations. The Frontier platform includes a “context layer” designed to connect disparate corporate data and applications, a common obstacle to AI adoption. Companies can build AI agents that share skills and memory across workflows, while managing them through an observability system. Products such as ChatGPT Enterprise are also part of the offering.
“Companies have realized that siloed AI deployments do not deliver the value and they don’t transform their company,” Dresser said.
The alliance underscores the ChatGPT maker's evolving view that AI as a “profound” technological shift requiring more than selling software licenses, Dresser said, as enterprises rethink their products. Many businesses that have attempted to deploy AI at scale have told Reuters they encounter real-world challenges that models alone do not solve.
Still Dresser expects that companies working with consulting firms over time “will then become self-sufficient on their own and ultimately be able to take their transformation forward."
“We do not want to build a model where we are doing the work. We want our customers to become self-sufficient,” she said.
In the enterprise race, OpenAI faces competition from rivals such as Anthropic and giants like Google that are selling AI capabilities to enterprises. OpenAI said its approach allows companies to keep existing systems while gaining closer research collaboration.
(Reporting by Krystal Hu in San Francisco; Editing by Stephen Coates)
