OpenAI is enlisting among the world’s greatest consulting companies in its struggle to dominate the enterprise AI market.
Today the AI firm introduced partnerships with Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Co., Accenture, and Capgemini that can see the consulting companies serving to promote and implement OpenAI’s new Frontier AI agent platform. The consultants will assist their shoppers redesign workflows; combine AI brokers with software program instruments and programs; assist shoppers with change administration; and supply industry-specific experience OpenAI doesn’t have in-house.
Frontier, which OpenAI debuted earlier this month, is a system that permits companies and organizations to construct, deploy, supervise, and govern AI brokers. It is a part of OpenAI’s effort to grab momentum within the enterprise AI market from its archrival, Anthropic, which over the previous yr has made substantial inroads within the enterprise market with its Claude Code and, extra just lately, its Claude Cowork merchandise.
At the identical time, the brand new partnership may spell bother for established software-as-a-service distributors corresponding to Salesforce, Workday, Microsoft, and ServiceNow. All of those corporations additionally rely upon so-called programs integrators corresponding to the massive consulting companies to assist market and deploy their software program to massive corporations and governments.
These SaaS distributors have been making an attempt to roll out AI agent platforms as nicely. But prior to now month, traders have punished their shares over considerations that prospects will select OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s new AI agent merchandise over these from the SaaS distributors, or that prospects could even use AI coding instruments, corresponding to OpenAI’s Codex and Anthropic’s Claude Code, to construct their very own software program, eliminating the necessity for the SaaS merchandise altogether.
Under these new partnerships, which OpenAI has deemed Frontier Alliances, every consulting agency is investing in devoted observe teams and constructing groups licensed on OpenAI know-how. Meanwhile OpenAI says its personal “forward deployed engineers” will work alongside the groups from the consultancies in consumer engagements.
BCG and McKinsey are positioned primarily as technique and working mannequin companions, serving to management groups determine the place and methods to deploy brokers at scale. Accenture and Capgemini take extra of an end-to-end programs integration position, moving into the weeds of information structure, cloud infrastructure, and the messy enterprise of connecting Frontier to the programs enterprises really run on.
OpenAI describes Frontier as a “semantic layer for the enterprise”—a unified platform that lets AI brokers navigate enterprise software program, execute workflows, and make selections throughout a corporation’s total know-how stack, such CRM programs, HR platforms, and inner ticketing instruments. Early enterprise prospects embrace Intuit, State Farm, Thermo Fisher, and Uber.
Bob Sternfels, McKinsey’s world managing companion, stated in an announcement accompanying the Frontier Alliances announcement that CEOs should “rewire their businesses, reimagining domains and evolving how their people work” to seize worth from agentic AI. BCG CEO Christoph Schweizer echoed that sentiment, noting that AI transformation have to be “linked to strategy, built into redesigned processes, and adopted at scale.”
Julie Sweet, Accenture’s CEO, stated in an announcement that her agency 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 stated. “It requires end-to-end execution across technology, data, security, and change management.”
For traders in enterprise software program corporations, right now’s announcement is probably going so as to add one other layer of tension following an already troublesome few weeks. The Frontier Alliances partnership makes the menace that prospects will select OpenAI’s agent orchestration platform over conventional SaaS choices extra concrete.
Things can also get tense between the SaaS corporations and the consulting companies. Accenture, Capgemini, McKinsey, and BCG are deeply embedded with the very SaaS corporations that Frontier may displace. For Salesforce, Microsoft, and ServiceNow, having BCG and McKinsey actively evangelize an alternate platform to the C-suite just isn’t a growth they may welcome.
