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Alistair Barr

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OpenAI is launching a new product that could help the company take another step beyond the ultra-competitive business of making AI models.

The offering, called OpenAI Presence, helps companies run AI agents better by connecting these systems to internal corporate data, policies, existing software, and workflows.

It's designed to automate parts of customer support, sales, and other tasks such as fixing billing issues, supporting insurance claims, or resolving employee IT service requests.

This is the latest example of OpenAI trying to move beyond selling access to AI models and into more parts of the corporate software market. While Presence could help OpenAI win more corporate business, it could also leave the startup competing with some of its AI model customers.

The new service includes features that let a customer test their agent for a chosen job, including simulations, guardrails, human review, and automated graders that use AI to check agent outputs. Once these agents launch inside companies, OpenAI's Codex tool can investigate issues that crop up and suggest updates.

Presence also comes with AI-powered voice and chat technology, which could help corporate customers automate more interactions with existing and potential customers.

OpenAI is making the service available to corporate customers on a case-by-case basis. Users must work with OpenAI's engineers or designated partners to access the tool.

"The agent receives only the knowledge and system access required for that job," OpenAI said. "The company sets the policies: what the agent can do, when it needs approval, and when a person should take over."

OpenAI is already using the tool to run its AI phone support channel for English speakers, the startup said.

The AI model race is becoming fiercely competitive, with rivals including Anthropic, Google, xAI, Meta, Mistral, DeepSeek, and others all offering increasingly capable models. This month, new open-weight Chinese AI models have shown again that performance gaps are narrowing, prices are falling, and many customers are becoming more willing to switch between providers.

That dynamic creates pressure on OpenAI to move into enterprise software, where products are stickier, and where customers buy complete business solutions rather than just AI models.

Presence appears to be part of that strategy. Instead of asking companies to build their own agent systems, OpenAI is packaging the surrounding software needed to deploy AI safely inside large organizations.

OpenAI isn't the only AI lab moving beyond models. Earlier this year, Anthropic launched an Enterprise AI Services company and expanded its Claude Partner Network to help businesses integrate AI into their operations.

With Presence, OpenAI increasingly looks less like a model company and more like an enterprise software provider with AI at its core.

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Stephen Council

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Stephen is a Senior Tech Reporter at Business Insider, covering OpenAI, Anthropic and the ecosystem around the leading artificial intelligence companies.Previously he covered technology at SFGATE, and has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Information and CNBC. He studied journalism and economics at Northwestern University.His work has earned an SF Press Club Investigative Reporting Award and, in 2025, SPJ NorCal’s Excellence in Journalism Award for Technology Reporting.Stephen lives in San Francisco. Contact him via email at [email protected], or on Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 415-757-8198. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

Alistair Barr

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Alistair Barr is the author of Business Insider's Tech Memo newsletter. Sign up here. Before that, he was BI's Global Tech Editor and the Big Tech team leader at Bloomberg, following a reporting career at The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Reuters, and MarketWatch. Alistair won a Gerald Loeb Award in 2007 for coverage of short selling and was a finalist in 2013 for scoops on the Facebook IPO. More recently, he won a 2024 San Francisco Press Club award for commentary. Got a tip? Reach out using the secure messaging app Signal (+1 415-341-4927) or via email on [email protected] oversees all things Big Tech, along with startups and venture capital. He writes analysis and columns about topics including generative AI, large language models, cloud computing, semiconductors, online search, e-commerce, EVs, robotics, and autonomous vehicles.Popular StoriesArtificial Intelligence:It's getting harder to make big leaps at the frontier of AIOpenAI's AI-adjusted earnings numbers have echoes of Groupon and WeWorkDeath by LLM: Stack Overflow's decline, and its plan to survive, shows the future of free online data in an AI worldCloud computing:Amazon dominated the first cloud era. The AI boom has kicked off Cloud 2.0, and the company doesn't have a head start this time.In cloud, there's AI (which is hot) and everything else (which is not)Chips:Why Intel is still so important: Real countries have fabsApple's made-in-the-USA chips signal a turnaround for the US's big semiconductor betEVs and Tesla:Tesla's AI supercomputer has a Silicon Valley town rushing to meet surging electricity demandTesla's Cybertruck is outselling almost every other EV in the USOnline Search:Google is losing its status as a verbA simple way to fix search: Bright pink ads