Dive Brief:
- HP inked a deal with OpenAI to deploy the provider's enterprise AI platform, Frontier, across its global operations, the two companies said Sunday. The partnership will make HP Inc. one of the first enterprises to adopt the platform at scale, according to a joint statement.
- The two companies plan to co-develop AI agents for customer support, employee productivity, software development and other internal operations. HP began an exploratory period in February when OpenAI released the platform, to assess how its technical capabilities and use cases would match with its priorities through pilots of agentic capabilities, platform components, security and enterprise integration.
- HP expects the deal will enable more consistent customer experiences across store, partner, chat and voice experiences, said Prakash Arunkundrum, chief strategy and transformation officer at HP, in a statement. “With OpenAI, there is an opportunity to fundamentally rethink how AI can deliver better outcomes,” he said.
Dive Insight:
HP, like others in the PC industry, is facing broad challenges to modernize and roll out AI-enabled units amid a mounting memory chip shortage.
The company went through a leadership transition earlier this year, when longtime President and CEO Enrique Lores departed the company for PayPal. “It has been an honor to lead HP through its evolution into an AI-driven technology company that is redefining workplace solutions and connecting with customers globally,” Lores said in February.
To prepare for an AI-centric future, HP is developing a suite of agentic AI devices that integrate into existing workflows to increase employee efficiency, the company said in the Sunday announcement.
In addition to its physical technology like PCs, printers and accessories, HP is building devices with dedicated hardware that are optimized to run constant agentic AI workloads. They enable customers to develop, run inference, and scale AI workloads with more control over token costs, latency and enterprise data security, interim CEO Bruce Broussard said during the company’s Q2 earnings call May 27.
“Our devices and software stack support the shift with strong architectural capabilities for edge inferencing and new AI workload,” he said. “We continue to believe the future of AI is hybrid, with edge playing an increasingly important role over time.”
Other vendors are also working to expand their offerings to a full-stack model as new workloads call for more compute power. Microsoft, for example, recently partnered with Nvidia to power agentic AI aboard Windows PCs.
The HP-OpenAI partnership is an example of how enterprises can make AI an operating layer, connecting the systems and workflows together, said Denise Dresser, chief revenue officer at OpenAI, in a statement.
“HP has been an exceptional early partner, turning early value from OpenAI APIs and tools like ChatGPT and Codex into repeatable systems,” Dresser said.
