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OpenAI’s 2025 Developer Day reinforced that AI has entered its platform phase. What began as tools for developers are now modular systems for enterprise orchestration—apps, agents, and models designed to embed intelligence directly into how companies operate. Below are the key themes we believe will shape enterprise AI over the next year.

1. Apps are becoming the new platform layer

OpenAI’s Apps SDK enables developers to build applications inside ChatGPT—marking the start of an “App Store moment” for AI. OpenAI’s vision is for apps to become native, immersive experiences—not websites or plug-ins—reshaping how consumers discover brands, engage with content, and transact.

For enterprises, it means faster go-to-market for AI-native offerings and a need to define ecosystem strategies for distribution, monetization, and data governance to ensure competitive advantage and winning business models.

2. Agentic systems are moving from pilots to production

The launch of AgentKit (with Agent Builder, ChatKit, Connector Registry, and enhanced Evals) provides the toolkit to build, deploy, and manage AI agents safely.

At Bain & Company, we have been early adopters of this approach. OpenAI chose to highlight one of our examples in its announcement: “At Bain & Company, we developed a multi-layer agentic development and evaluation strategy. By leveraging OpenAI’s Evals, we are already seeing a 25% efficiency gain in our methodology through more efficient dataset curation, improved prompt optimization, and automated trace validation.”

Bain’s code modernization agent—featured in Sam Altman’s keynote—is one example of this innovation in action, accelerating our clients’ large-scale software transformation with structured evaluation, auditability, and human oversight built in.

This shift turns AI from copilots into structured, auditable systems of work—where orchestration, evaluation, and human oversight define success.

3. Code generation moves from copilot to collaborator

With Codex in General Availability, now integrated with Slack and supported by an SDK, AI can be embedded directly into developer workflows—reviewing code, writing modules, or maintaining pipelines as a digital teammate, managed by enterprise controls.

This marks the transition from individual productivity tools to collaborative digital labor, consistent with Bain’s perspective in “What’s Missing from Your AI Strategy: Strategic Clarity”—where AI takes on defined roles within teams and processes.

4. Video and multimodal generation are now creative infrastructure

Sora 2 and new mini image/audio models make video creation, image generation, and audio responses fast, affordable, and realistic—turning multimedia generation into a standard enterprise capability.

Creative and marketing teams can now scale content with precision and personalization, shifting focus from creating assets to governing pipelines and ensuring brand integrity.

5. APIs signal a deeper focus on developers—the next wave of enterprise enablement

The enterprise AI platform era

The sum of these announcements points to a clear direction: AI is becoming a living business platform. Organizations are shifting from using AI to running on AI—where apps, agents, and models continuously collaborate across operations.

Those who re-architect workflows around modular AI services—and build strong governance and measurement into them—will define the next generation of competitive advantage.

Rishi Sunak has taken up paid adviser roles at tech giant Microsoft and artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic.

The former prime minister has been told he must not lobby ministers on behalf of the companies by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), an independent watchdog which oversees the activities of former government figures.

Sunak – who remains the MP for Richmond and Northallerton – said he was “delighted” to be working “with two of the world’s leading tech firms” and planned to donate his earnings to a charity he founded.

During his premiership, Sunak made tech regulation a significant priority, setting up an AI safety summit in 2023.

In letters of advice sent to Sunak by Acoba and published on Thursday, his part-time role at Microsoft was described as providing “high- level strategic perspectives” on geopolitical trends.

The watchdog said it had been informed by Sunak that his part-time advisory role at Anthropic – an AI firm seeking to compete with companies like OpenAI, Google and Meta – would be “akin to operating as an internal think tank”.

Acoba said Anthropic “has a significant interest in UK government policy”, meaning that Sunak’s appointment could potentially be seen to offer “unfair access and influence” within government.

The appointment with Microsoft, a “major investor” in the UK, also presented similar issues, it wrote.

However, it also said that his time spent out of government would have reduced the value of any information Sunak may still possess, while reiterating the standing rules ex-ministers have to abide when seeking employment after leaving government.

Sunak was told not to advise on bidding for UK contracts, or to lobby the government for two years from his last day in ministerial office.

In addition to the two tech roles, it was previously confirmed Sunak will act as a paid advisor to the bank Goldman Sachs, where he previously worked between 2001 and 2004.

There had been speculation that Sunak, who was in No 10 between October 2022 and July 2024, would leave the Commons to take up a Silicon Valley role shortly after the election.

He previously lived in California, where he still has a home, and held a US visa until 2021.

But in his final prime minister’s questions, Sunak vowed to spend more time in his constituency, which he called “the greatest place on Earth”.

“If anyone needs me, I will be in Yorkshire,” he said.

All proceeds from the new roles will be donated to The Richmond Project, a charity Sunak founded with his wife to tackle numeracy problems in the UK, another area he was vocal about while in Downing Street.

Posting on social media, Sunak said he would use his roles to “ensure” that coming technological change “delivers the improvements in all of our lives”.

Sunak said: “I have long believed that technology will transform our world and play a key part in determining our future.

“We stand on the edge of a technological revolution whose impacts will be as profound as those of the industrial revolution: and felt more quickly.”