The news: OpenAI is working on an enterprise product that would rival both Microsoft 365 and Google Workplace, per The Information.

• The features would allow user collaboration within documents and chat capabilities among co-workers, according to two sources.
• There’s no timeline for or confirmation that OpenAI will release the features at all, but CEO Sam Altman has said he wants to make ChatGPT a “supersmart personal assistant for work.”

Growing docket: OpenAI has consistently added enterprise tools this year in an effort to capitalize on its existing momentum with enterprise customers. In September 2024, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told Bloomberg that 75% of the company’s revenues came from subscriptions.

• In January, it entered the AI agent race with Tasks, a personal assistant that automates scheduling and managing tasks.
• In May, it released Codex, a coding agent for ChatGPT that can generate code and test its own outputs.
• In early June, it incorporated options into ChatGPT to search local files in SharePoint, Dropbox, Google Drive, and more, providing seamless integration with productivity cloud apps.

Why this could work: OpenAI has first-mover advantage in the generative AI (genAI) space—its ChatGPT kicked off the genAI era in November 2022. Microsoft’s Copilot launched in 365 enterprise plans a full year later. Consumers’ familiarity with ChatGPT has carried over into the workplace.

One client that uses both ChatGPT and Copilot, Bain & Co, said the vast majority of its 16,000 seatholders use ChatGPT, but only about 2,000 use Copilot, and mostly for Excel assistance, per Bloomberg.

OpenAI also offers discounted subscriptions for ChatGPT enterprise packages when customers agree to buy more AI products, potentially undercutting Microsoft’s prices.

Roadblocks: OpenAI is a newbie when it comes to a full suite of office productivity tools. While it can assist with writing and research, it lacks the framework—like Microsoft Word and Excel and Google Documents and Sheets.

OpenAI’s enterprise product would still require businesses to subscribe to Microsoft or Google products, potentially resulting in higher costs.

Our take: OpenAI took the enterprise world by storm and now has over 3 million paid business subscribers. It has the potential to be an all-in-one solution if it could use its interface as a document creator and data storage solution, but Microsoft’s and Google’s brand recognition in that space is likely to keep ChatGPT enterprise solutions on the sidelines—for now.