After Anthropic, OpenAI launches Codex plugins to automate banking, sales and other white-collar jobs
OpenAI has launched six new Codex plugins designed to help automate tasks across investment banking, sales, product design and other white-collar professions. This is the company's latest effort to win enterprise customers as competition with Anthropic heats up.
OpenAI is now getting into the enterprise AI market with a new set of tools designed to help businesses automate a growing range of professional tasks. The company has announced six new Codex plugins that can assist with jobs typically handled by bankers, sales teams, product designers, analysts and other knowledge workers, suggesting how AI is steadily moving beyond software development and into mainstream office work. The launch comes at a time when AI companies are racing to prove that their technology can deliver real business value. While coding assistants have been one of the biggest success stories of generative AI so far, OpenAI believes the next wave of growth will come from helping professionals across industries complete complex work faster.
According to OpenAI, Codex now has more than 5 million weekly active users, a figure that has grown more than six-fold since the company launched its desktop application in February. While software developers still make up the largest group of users, OpenAI says knowledge workers now account for around 20 per cent of its user base and are expanding at a much faster pace.
"OpenAI today released a new report, The Next Era of Knowledge Work, showing how Codex is no longer just a coding tool. Increasingly, it’s helping people across professions automate routine work, move faster, and eliminate the bottlenecks of modern knowledge work," the company said in a blog post.
To attract more of these users, OpenAI has introduced six specialised plugins covering data analytics, creative production, sales, product design, equity investing and investment banking, according to Tech Crunch. Rather than acting as simple chatbots, the plugins combine instructions, integrations and contextual information to help Codex perform tasks that resemble the work carried out by professionals in those fields.
The company says the tools are designed to be useful from day one, although performance can improve further when businesses customise them for their own workflows.
Enterprise AI race moves beyond coding
The announcement shows how quickly the competition between AI firms is moving toward enterprise customers. Earlier this year, rival AI company Anthropic launched a series of industry-focused AI agents, particularly targeting financial institutions. In May, Anthropic unveiled ten specialised agents capable of handling common finance-related work such as preparing pitch books, drafting credit memos and helping firms close their books. The company has also expanded partnerships with banks, financial data providers and software platforms as it seeks deeper adoption among large businesses.
The financial sector has emerged as one of the biggest battlegrounds for AI companies. Earlier reports revealed that Goldman Sachs has been working with Anthropic to build AI-powered agents capable of handling internal functions including transaction accounting, trade operations, client onboarding and due diligence processes. The bank expects the technology to reduce the time required for many operational tasks.
OpenAI now appears to be following a similar path, but with a broader focus that extends beyond finance. The company believes AI systems are becoming capable of handling increasingly meaningful work across organisations, from analysing data and creating presentations to supporting sales teams and product development efforts.
Alongside the new plugins, OpenAI has introduced a feature called Sites. The capability allows Codex to turn its output into a hosted interactive website instead of simply generating local files. To support the feature, OpenAI has partnered with companies including Wix, Replit and Figma, while indicating that additional partners could join the ecosystem in the future.
Another addition is Annotations, a feature that lets users highlight specific sections of a document or file. This gives Codex more precise context when carrying out tasks, potentially improving the quality and relevance of its responses.
The rollout comes only weeks after OpenAI announced the OpenAI Deployment Company, a joint venture backed by more than $4 billion in funding from global investment firms. The initiative is focused on helping businesses integrate OpenAI's technology more deeply into their operations.
"AI is becoming capable of doing increasingly meaningful work inside organizations,” OpenAI chief revenue officer Denise Dresser said in a statement. “The challenge now is helping companies integrate these systems into the infrastructure and workflows that power their businesses."
OpenAI is now getting into the enterprise AI market with a new set of tools designed to help businesses automate a growing range of professional tasks. The company has announced six new Codex plugins that can assist with jobs typically handled by bankers, sales teams, product designers, analysts and other knowledge workers, suggesting how AI is steadily moving beyond software development and into mainstream office work. The launch comes at a time when AI companies are racing to prove that their technology can deliver real business value. While coding assistants have been one of the biggest success stories of generative AI so far, OpenAI believes the next wave of growth will come from helping professionals across industries complete complex work faster.
According to OpenAI, Codex now has more than 5 million weekly active users, a figure that has grown more than six-fold since the company launched its desktop application in February. While software developers still make up the largest group of users, OpenAI says knowledge workers now account for around 20 per cent of its user base and are expanding at a much faster pace.
"OpenAI today released a new report, The Next Era of Knowledge Work, showing how Codex is no longer just a coding tool. Increasingly, it’s helping people across professions automate routine work, move faster, and eliminate the bottlenecks of modern knowledge work," the company said in a blog post.
To attract more of these users, OpenAI has introduced six specialised plugins covering data analytics, creative production, sales, product design, equity investing and investment banking, according to Tech Crunch. Rather than acting as simple chatbots, the plugins combine instructions, integrations and contextual information to help Codex perform tasks that resemble the work carried out by professionals in those fields.
The company says the tools are designed to be useful from day one, although performance can improve further when businesses customise them for their own workflows.
Enterprise AI race moves beyond coding
The announcement shows how quickly the competition between AI firms is moving toward enterprise customers. Earlier this year, rival AI company Anthropic launched a series of industry-focused AI agents, particularly targeting financial institutions. In May, Anthropic unveiled ten specialised agents capable of handling common finance-related work such as preparing pitch books, drafting credit memos and helping firms close their books. The company has also expanded partnerships with banks, financial data providers and software platforms as it seeks deeper adoption among large businesses.
The financial sector has emerged as one of the biggest battlegrounds for AI companies. Earlier reports revealed that Goldman Sachs has been working with Anthropic to build AI-powered agents capable of handling internal functions including transaction accounting, trade operations, client onboarding and due diligence processes. The bank expects the technology to reduce the time required for many operational tasks.
OpenAI now appears to be following a similar path, but with a broader focus that extends beyond finance. The company believes AI systems are becoming capable of handling increasingly meaningful work across organisations, from analysing data and creating presentations to supporting sales teams and product development efforts.
Alongside the new plugins, OpenAI has introduced a feature called Sites. The capability allows Codex to turn its output into a hosted interactive website instead of simply generating local files. To support the feature, OpenAI has partnered with companies including Wix, Replit and Figma, while indicating that additional partners could join the ecosystem in the future.
Another addition is Annotations, a feature that lets users highlight specific sections of a document or file. This gives Codex more precise context when carrying out tasks, potentially improving the quality and relevance of its responses.
The rollout comes only weeks after OpenAI announced the OpenAI Deployment Company, a joint venture backed by more than $4 billion in funding from global investment firms. The initiative is focused on helping businesses integrate OpenAI's technology more deeply into their operations.
"AI is becoming capable of doing increasingly meaningful work inside organizations,” OpenAI chief revenue officer Denise Dresser said in a statement. “The challenge now is helping companies integrate these systems into the infrastructure and workflows that power their businesses."
