With a history of serving consumers, OpenAI showed it also has an enterprise strategy by unveiling a multiyear deal with ServiceNow on Tuesday. Additionally, ServiceNow is expanding beyond IT services, making OpenAI the preferred choice.
Through the partnership, ServiceNow will embed OpenAI’s GPT 5.2 model into its platform to power autonomous AI agents in areas such as IT, HR and customer service. Both vendors will develop in real time AI voice technology For customer service agents and human resources employees. Additionally, ServiceNow will use OpenAI’s computer usage models to automate system and desktop-based tasks.
The relationship between the two vendors began in 2023 when ServiceNow integrated Microsoft Azure OpenAI service into its now platform.
The expanded partnership highlights OpenAI’s strategy in the enterprise IT market, while helping ServiceNow make its non-IT workflows more intelligent and automated. It also enables IT self-service salespeople to use OpenAI’s voice model in customer service workflows.
an enterprise play
For OpenAI, this is just one part of its emerging enterprise game. The model provider has spent the last few months partnering with major vendorsincluding cerebrusBroadcom, AWS, Oracle and SoftBank.
Through these partnerships, OpenAI embeds its technology within enterprises without selling it directly to them.
“The way they win in enterprise will largely be ‘design in’ wins,” said David Nicholson, an analyst at Futurum Group.
That concept is the approach of incorporating one vendor’s technology into another company’s product. For example, the technology that powers Safari (Apple’s web browser) is from Google. Similarly, when ServiceNow incorporates OpenAI’s models into its workflow and deploys them to its customers, OpenAI benefits every time ServiceNow deploys new technology, and a customer purchases that product. ServiceNow’s expanded partnership with OpenAI puts the model provider increasingly at the forefront of enterprises and could help it remain relevant AI marketNicholson said, especially amid speculation that 2026 could be the year the generative AI vendor loses some traction.
“This is another strong signal that OpenAI is hedging its bets and not relying solely on its brand to move forward,” he said. “They realize that in the IT world today, partnerships, ecosystems, platforms, all these things interacting together, that’s how you succeed.”
ServiceNow and Enterprises
The partnership could also attract enterprises that may be hesitant to try OpenAI themselves. Enterprise IT vendors like ServiceNow provide a safety net for businesses to try out OpenAI technology through a trusted platform.
For ServiceNow, the expanded partnership means its platform has become more intelligent and more automated without creating frontier models. While the vendor has historically focused on IT services, it is moving into non-IT domains such as human resources and customer service.
ServiceNow’s growing focus strengthened When it acquired AI and enterprise search vendor Moveworks last March.
Additionally, non-IT domains highlight the importance of voice, said Arun Chandrasekaran, an analyst at Gartner.
“The other part of this partnership is that they believe OpenAI’s voice models will be very valuable to their business workflows, especially their customer service workflows,” Chandrasekaran said. then some OpenAI’s speech models Will likely make its way into ServiceNow workflows soon.
He said that while other IT service providers are model-agnostic, ServiceNow thinks it can provide true speech-to-speech by working with OpenAI. This means that, instead of the cascading effects of current speech-to-speech technology, in which speech is first converted to text and then back to speech, ServiceNow wants straight-up speech-to-speech technology.
some challenges
However, one unknown is whether OpenAI will lead the voice AI market in the next three to four years, especially compared to other speech providers such as eleven laboratories Innovating, Chandrasekaran said.
Another challenge is that OpenAI must fulfill its end of the agreement.
“The danger will be if OpenAI fails to deliver a solid partner support system,” Nicholson said. “There’s real work to be done. And I’m hoping they find people who have the experience to do that.”
He added that if OpenAI is to hire experienced professionals to execute on this strategy, it should do so, as the vendor does not currently have a proven track record of supporting partnerships over time.
