OpenAI Executive: Haven't Truly Seen AI Penetrate Business Processes Yet

AI technology applications for individuals are quite mature, but truly integrating into core business processes remains a difficult challenge.

On February 25th, according to tech media TechCrunch, OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap stated during the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi that despite strong enterprise AI demand, the vision of large-scale AI deployment into business workflows is still in the conceptual stage.

He pointed out that corporate organizational structures are complex, involving multiple teams and system integrations. For AI to truly embed within these structures, the difficulty far exceeds that of individual user scenarios.

To address this challenge, OpenAI earlier this month launched the enterprise platform OpenAI Frontier, aimed at helping companies build and manage AI agents. Meanwhile, OpenAI announced partnerships with leading consulting firms such as Boston Consulting Group (BCG), McKinsey, Accenture, and Capgemini to promote its technology deployment at the enterprise level.

Challenges in Enterprise AI Deployment

The report states that Lightcap admitted that current AI systems are powerful enough for any individual to use independently, but enterprises are highly complex organizations with large numbers of personnel and teams that need to collaborate, utilizing various systems and tools to achieve complex goals — a fundamental difference from personal user scenarios.

“We haven’t yet truly seen AI penetrate into enterprise business processes, and this has partly inspired our recent efforts with OpenAI Frontier.”

Lightcap pointed out that there has been long-standing speculation that AI agents will fully take over business processes and that “SaaS is dead.” While such predictions have shaken SaaS stock prices multiple times, they have yet to become reality.

He also revealed that last year, OpenAI was a heavy user of Slack, which underscores that even AI companies still rely heavily on traditional enterprise software.

Frontier Platform: Measuring Value by Business Outcomes, Not Seat Licenses

Regarding the newly launched Frontier platform, Lightcap said OpenAI will attempt to measure its impact based on “business outcomes” rather than “seat licenses,” though the company has not yet disclosed the pricing scheme. He stated:

“Frontier is our way of experimenting and iterating to explore how to truly bring AI into those complex, chaotic enterprise domains. If we get it right, we will gain many new insights for both enterprises and AI systems themselves.”

On the partnership front, OpenAI has partnered with consulting giants BCG, McKinsey, Accenture, and Capgemini to assist in deploying its technology at the enterprise level. Competitor Anthropic is also active, launching plugins for finance, engineering, and design fields to support building intelligent agents based on the Claude model.

Additionally, Lightcap mentioned OpenAI’s recent acquisition of open-source tool OpenClaw, calling it a “glimpse into the future” — a future where agents can almost complete any task users want on a computer. However, he admitted that there is currently no clear path for integration.

Strong Demand, Continuous Revenue Growth

In terms of business growth, Lightcap said demand remains strong, and the company almost constantly faces demand management pressures.

“We almost always find ourselves dealing with too many requests. We are still a growing organization, and global demand is something we are eager to meet. We are doing everything we can to achieve that.”

Financially, OpenAI’s CFO Sarah Friar disclosed in January that the company’s annualized revenue for 2025 has surpassed $20 billion.

Lightcap did not disclose specific figures at the summit but reiterated that demand remains robust.

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