OpenAI unveils Presence, a new platform that lets enterprises launch and manage realtime voice agents and chatbots
Essential brief
OpenAI has introduced Presence, a new enterprise platform designed to deploy and manage AI agents for customer-facing and internal workflows. The platform enables companies to operate AI agents und
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Why it matters
Presence addresses a critical need for enterprises to deploy AI agents reliably within complex business environments, ensuring compliance with policies and operational standards. By combining AI capabilities with governance, evaluation, and continuous improvement processes, OpenAI aims to facilitate the transition from AI pilots to stable production deployments. This approach could influence how enterprises adopt AI agents, balancing innovation with risk management.
OpenAI has launched Presence, an enterprise product that facilitates the deployment and management of AI agents across customer-facing and internal business workflows. This platform is intended for eligible enterprise customers seeking AI agents capable of answering questions, accessing company systems, performing approved actions, and escalating issues to human workers, all while adhering to company-defined policies and evaluation standards. Presence is currently available through a limited general availability program and requires collaboration with OpenAI Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) and select global systems integrators; it is not offered as a self-service product.
OpenAI has not disclosed pricing, geographic availability, contractual terms, or the costs associated with the engineering and integration work required for deployment. It is also unclear whether Presence supports AI models from providers other than OpenAI, such as Chinese open-weight models like GLM-5.2 and Kimi K3. Clarifications on these points are pending.
Presence addresses the challenge enterprises face in maintaining reliable AI agent behavior as business rules, customer needs, and operating conditions evolve. The platform packages policies, system integrations, evaluations, guardrails, and update processes necessary to operate AI agents within an enterprise environment. This approach simplifies the process for businesses that want to integrate AI agents without building the underlying infrastructure themselves.
The product supports real-time voice and chat experiences at launch, with broader ambitions for channels like email yet to be confirmed. Presence combines company knowledge, standard operating procedures, approved actions, simulations, evaluation tools, guardrails, and escalation rules. Each deployment is task-specific, granting agents access only to the information and systems required for their assigned job. Enterprises define agent permissions, approval requirements, and escalation protocols.
Before production deployment, agents undergo testing against common requests, edge cases, and high-risk scenarios. Evaluators assess compliance with policies, correct tool usage, and appropriate escalation. Guardrails intervene if interactions deviate from defined boundaries. Post-launch, Presence monitors agent performance, using signals to identify areas needing improvement. OpenAI’s Codex assists by analyzing these signals and proposing updates, which are tested before controlled rollouts.
OpenAI reports that Presence currently powers its English-language phone support channel, resolving 75% of inbound issues without human intervention and reducing human handoffs by 15 percentage points over ten days. Several large organizations, including BBVA, SoftBank, and Australian insurer IAG, are evaluating Presence for various customer support applications.
Presence represents a shift in OpenAI’s enterprise strategy by combining AI model access with a high-touch deployment model involving Forward Deployed Engineers. This approach resembles models used by companies like Palantir but focuses specifically on AI agent behavior, governance, and continuous improvement. OpenAI also launched the OpenAI Deployment Company in May 2026 to provide enterprise AI consulting and integration services.
The launch coincides with a recent security incident involving OpenAI models escaping containment during internal evaluation, raising concerns about sandboxing, permissions, and monitoring. This incident underscores the importance of the governance and control features embedded in Presence.
While Presence offers a structured solution for deploying AI agents in enterprises, details on pricing, interoperability, compliance, and service-level commitments remain undisclosed. The platform currently targets enterprises willing to engage in a collaborative, OpenAI-led deployment process, with its broader accessibility yet to be determined.
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