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.
If that's the direction OpenAI is taking, it increasingly looks less like a model company and more like an enterprise software provider with AI at its core. Sign up for BI's Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.
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