OpenAI partners with consulting giants to push enterprise AI beyond pilot projects

OpenAI deepens partnerships with consulting giants to push enterprise AI beyond pilot

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 partnership is 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 (GOOGL.O), opens new tab 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 Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Artificial Intelligence Krystal Hu Thomson Reuters Krystal reports on venture capital and startups for Reuters. She covers Silicon Valley and beyond through the lens of money and characters, with a focus on growth-stage startups, tech investments and AI. She has previously covered M&A for Reuters, breaking stories on Trump's SPAC and Elon Musk's Twitter financing. Previously, she reported on Amazon for Yahoo Finance, and her investigation of the company's retail practice was cited by lawmakers in Congress. Krystal started a career in journalism by writing about tech and politics in China. She has a master's degree from New York University, and enjoys a scoop of Matcha ice cream as much as getting a scoop at work.

OpenAI lands multi-year deals with consulting giants in enterprise push

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman addresses the gathering at the AI Impact Summit, in New Delhi, India, February 19, 2026. OpenAI on Monday announced it is entering into multi-year partnerships with four consulting firms that will help the company deploy its enterprise platform called Frontier. The artificial intelligence startup said it has formed "Frontier Alliances" with Accenture, Boston Consulting Group, Capgemini and McKinsey & Company, according to a release. The company declined to share the financial details of the partnerships. Lan Guan, the chief AI and data officer at Accenture, said OpenAI's Frontier Alliances serve as an example of how product companies, consulting companies and strategy companies should come together to accelerate AI deployment. "This is the inflection moment," Guan said in an interview. "It's our time to help enterprise clients to actually realize the value of AI." OpenAI is racing against rivals like Google and Anthropic to win users and marketshare, and the company has made an aggressive push to court enterprise customers in recent months. OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told CNBC in January that enterprises account for roughly 40% of OpenAI's business, though she expects that figure to reach closer to 50% by the end of the year. Frontier, which OpenAI unveiled earlier this month, acts as an intelligence layer that stitches together disparate systems and data within an organization. It aims to make it easier for companies to manage, deploy and build AI agents, which are tools that can independently complete tasks on behalf of a user.

OpenAI partners with McKinsey, BCG, Accenture, and Capgemini to push its Frontier AI agent platform | Fortune

OpenAI is enlisting some of the world's biggest consulting firms in its fight to dominate the enterprise AI market. Today the AI company announced partnerships with Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Company, Accenture, and Capgemini that will see the consulting firms helping to sell and implement OpenAI's new Frontier AI agent platform. The consultants will help their clients redesign workflows, integrate AI agents with software tools and systems, help clients with change management, and provide industry-specific expertise OpenAI doesn't have in-house. Frontier, which OpenAI debuted earlier this month, is a system that allows businesses and organizations to build, deploy, supervise, and govern AI agents. It is part of OpenAI's effort to seize momentum in the enterprise AI market from its arch rival Anthropic, which over the past year has made substantial inroads in the business market with its Claude Code and, more recently, its Claude Cowork products. At the same time, the new partnership could spell trouble for established software-as-a-service vendors such as Salesforce, Workday, Microsoft, and ServiceNow. All of these companies also depend on so-called "systems integrators" such as the big consulting firms to help market and deploy their software to big companies and governments. These SaaS vendors have also been trying to roll out AI agent platforms. But in the past month, investors have punished their shares over concerns that customers will choose OpenAI's and Anthropic's new AI agent products over those from the SaaS vendors, or that customers may even use AI coding tools, such as OpenAI's Codex and Anthropic's Claude Code, to build their own software, eliminating the need for the SaaS products altogether. Under these new partnerships, which OpenAI has deemed Frontier Alliances, each consulting firm is investing in dedicated practice groups and building teams certified on OpenAI technology. Meanwhile OpenAI says its own "forward deployed engineers" will work alongside the teams from the consultancies in client engagements. BCG and McKinsey are positioned primarily as strategy and operating model partners, helping leadership teams figure out where and how to deploy agents at scale. Accenture and Capgemini take more of an end-to-end systems integration role, getting into the weeds of data architecture, cloud infrastructure, and the messy business of connecting Frontier to the systems enterprises actually run on. OpenAI describes Frontier as a "semantic layer for the enterprise" -- a unified platform that lets AI agents navigate business software, execute workflows, and make decisions across an organization's entire technology stack, such CRM systems, HR platforms, and internal ticketing tools. Early enterprise customers include Intuit, State Farm, Thermo Fisher, and Uber. Bob Sternfels, McKinsey's global managing partner, said in a statement accompanying the Frontier Alliances announcement that CEOs must "rewire their businesses, reimagining domains and evolving how their people work" to capture value from agentic AI. BCG CEO Christoph Schweizer echoed that sentiment, noting that AI transformation must be "linked to strategy, built into redesigned processes, and adopted at scale." Julie Sweet, Accenture's CEO, said in a statement that her firm was "excited to deepen our work with OpenAI" and "to help clients turn AI into real outcomes." "Business transformation requires more than great models," she said. "It requires end-to-end execution across technology, data, security, and change management." For investors in enterprise software companies, today's announcement is likely to add another layer of anxiety following an already difficult few weeks. The Frontier Alliances partnership makes the threat that customers will choose OpenAI's agent orchestration platform over traditional SaaS offerings more concrete. Things may also get tense between the SaaS companies and the consulting firms. Accenture, Capgemini, McKinsey, and BCG are deeply embedded with the very SaaS companies that Frontier could displace. For Salesforce, Microsoft, and ServiceNow, having BCG and McKinsey actively evangelize an alternative platform to the C-suite is not a development they will welcome.

OpenAI deepens partnerships with consulting giants to push enterprise AI beyond pilot

OpenAI is partnering with major consulting firms like BCG and McKinsey. This collaboration aims to help businesses fully implement AI. The initiative focuses on integrating AI agents into core operations. 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 partnership is 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.

OpenAI deepens partnerships with consulting giants to push enterprise AI beyond pilot

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 partnership is 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)