OpenAI has struck multi-year partnerships with Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey, Accenture and Capgemini to help large organisations deploy Frontier, its platform for building, running and managing AI agents in enterprise environments.
The company's case for bringing in outside help is direct: the limiting factor for enterprise AI is no longer model intelligence but how agents are built and operated. Frontier provides the technical foundation, OpenAI argues, but realising value from it requires leadership alignment, workflow redesign, system integration and change management, capabilities that sit with consultancies rather than with a model provider.
How the partnerships will work
Each of the four firms is entering a multi-year arrangement that covers strategy, system integration, workflow redesign and scaled deployment. Partners will work alongside OpenAI's Forward Deployed Engineering team, invest in dedicated practice groups and certify staff on OpenAI technology. In return, OpenAI will provide technical resources, roadmap visibility and access to its product and research teams.
The division of labour between the four firms reflects their different strengths. OpenAI positioned McKinsey and BCG as bringing strategy and change management depth, while Accenture and Capgemini will focus on connecting Frontier to enterprise systems and data securely, where integration complexity and compliance requirements tend to slow deployments most.
BCG chief executive Christoph Schweizer said the partnership combines OpenAI's platform with BCG's industry and functional expertise, describing transformation as something that must be built into redesigned processes and adopted at scale with aligned incentives, not just deployed as a technology layer.
The commercial logic
For OpenAI, the alliances solve a distribution problem. Selling AI infrastructure to large enterprises requires navigating procurement cycles, IT governance, change management and boardroom scepticism, none of which a model provider is well placed to manage alone. Partnering with firms that already have long-standing relationships at the executive level gives Frontier a route into accounts that might otherwise take years to develop.
For the consultancies, the arrangement positions them as the firms that can actually execute AI transformation rather than just advise on it, a meaningful distinction as clients grow impatient with strategy engagements that do not produce measurable results.
Related reading
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Availability and next steps
Frontier is currently available to a limited set of customers, with OpenAI saying broader access will follow over the next few months. Enterprises interested in working with the company are directed to contact their existing OpenAI account team. The restricted availability suggests the product is still being refined at scale before a wider rollout, with the partner network potentially serving as both a deployment channel and a source of real-world feedback on how the platform performs across different industries and use cases.
The recap
- OpenAI partners with BCG, McKinsey, Accenture and Capgemini.
- Partners will build dedicated practice groups certified on OpenAI technology.
- Frontier available to limited customers; wider availability in coming months.
