OpenAI Shifts Focus to Enterprise, Betting on AI Co-Workers for Workplace Productivity
OpenAI is moving away from consumer products to focus on enterprise customers, with corporate leaders now accounting for 40% of the company's revenue. The shift reflects a broader industry race between OpenAI and rival Anthropic to secure paid workplace contracts as both firms struggle with the massive costs of running their AI models.
Denise Dresser, OpenAI's first chief revenue officer, said corporate leaders are no longer testing AI at the margins. "These leaders recognize AI as the most consequential shift of their lifetime, and they're asking us how to reinvent their companies around it," she said during her first 90 days in the role.
What Enterprise Customers Actually Want
Companies are tired of scattered AI tools that don't work together, according to Dresser. She said clients repeatedly ask for solutions that integrate across systems rather than create fragmented workflows.
To address that demand, OpenAI is building OpenAI Frontier, described as an underlying intelligence layer that powers AI "co-workers" moving across a company's tools and data. A unified interface called the AI superapp combines ChatGPT, the Codex coding assistant, and agent-based tools in a single workplace platform.
Oracle, State Farm, and Uber are already using Frontier to build and manage AI agents company-wide, according to Dresser. Codex has reached 3 million weekly active users, and OpenAI's APIs process more than 15 billion tokens per minute.
The Numbers Behind the Shift
Enterprise revenue is on track to reach parity with consumer revenue by the end of 2026. CFO Sarah Friar told the Associated Press that business customers accounted for roughly 20% of OpenAI's revenue when she joined in 2024, rising to about 40% today.
The push matters because roughly 95% of ChatGPT's 900 million weekly users don't pay for the service. OpenAI is betting that workplace adoption will generate the recurring revenue needed to cover operating costs.
Anthropic Intensifies the Race
Anthropic, OpenAI's primary competitor, has launched Claude, an AI assistant for corporate legal departments that handles contract review and document workflows. The company claims annualised revenue of US$30 billion and has introduced advanced models including Claude Mythos and Opus 4.7.
Researcher Luke Emberson of Epoch AI told the Canadian Press that Anthropic appears to be growing faster than OpenAI and could overtake it if current trends continue. Both companies are privately held and valued at US$852 billion and US$380 billion respectively, with both losing more money than they make.
Computing Power and Cost Pressures
OpenAI has shut down its Sora video generator app to free computing resources for next-generation models. CFO Friar said the decision was difficult but necessary: "We need to make sure that our new model that's coming has enough compute."
Both OpenAI and Anthropic face mounting pressure from electricity-hungry data centres. Anthropic has imposed rate limits on heavy users, and both firms have introduced tiered pricing. AI critic Ed Zitron has warned of a potential "subprime AI crisis" if businesses become dependent on services that later restrict access or raise prices.
For HR professionals, the shift signals that AI tools will increasingly embed into daily work processes rather than remain separate applications. Understanding how these systems operate across company data and workflows will become essential for talent management, recruitment automation, and workforce planning. Consider exploring AI for Human Resources or the AI Learning Path for CHROs to stay current with enterprise deployment strategies.
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