OpenAI tempers enterprise AI expectations despite revenue growth

OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap stated that the company has not yet really seen AI penetrate enterprise business processes—the core operational workflows within large organizations—at scale. Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit held last week, Lightcap noted that this reality served as part of the inspiration for OpenAI Frontier, a platform launched earlier this month for enterprises to build and manage agents. “One of the interesting things and some of the inspiration for the work we’ve been doing lately around OpenAI Frontier is we have not yet really seen enterprise AI penetrate enterprise business process,” Lightcap, the company’s COO, said.

This outlook comes despite growth in the company’s financial performance. In January, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar posted that the company ended 2025 with over $20 billion in annualized revenue. Although global demand remains high, the company is shifting how it evaluates its enterprise products. Instead of relying on seat licenses, OpenAI plans to measure the success of its platform based on business outcomes.

As part of its expansion, OpenAI is focusing on India, which represents its second biggest user base outside the U.S. with more than 100 million weekly users. To support this market, the company is set to open two new offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru, which are likely to be sales and go-to-market offices. A key part of the strategy in India is deploying voice models designed to run in low-latency and low-bandwidth environments—technical constraints that often limit AI deployment in areas with minimal internet connection capacity or processing delays. Lightcap noted that voice is crucial for enabling access to technology for historically disenfranchised groups. Despite India’s user base, it currently ranks fourth in terms of enterprise seats in Asia, leaving room for expansion.

To drive enterprise adoption, OpenAI has partnered with consultancies to deploy its technology:

• Boston Consulting Group
• McKinsey
• Accenture
• Capgemini

While pushing for deeper enterprise integration, the company is also maintaining a grounded perspective on how AI will affect the labor market, particularly in countries like India with prominent IT services and business process outsourcing sectors. Lightcap acknowledged that work will look different in the future, but emphasized the need for empathy as the business cycle evolves.

Why it matters

OpenAI is balancing aggressive global expansion and revenue growth with a pragmatic, long-term view on how AI actually integrates into complex enterprise workflows.