HP expands OpenAI partnership to scale AI across business

HP has launched a strategic partnership with OpenAI called Frontier and plans to expand the programme after pilot projects across several parts of the business.

The partnership is meant to extend HP's use of artificial intelligence in customer and partner services, internal productivity, software development and operational reporting. The work has moved beyond small-scale testing after trials that began earlier this year.

Among the early examples HP cited, one engineer used OpenAI models to work through 122 pull requests across 43 projects within a few weeks. A security team also used the tools to fix several software bugs in a single day, which HP estimated might otherwise have taken up to a month.

The rollout marks a broader move to embed OpenAI tools in regular workflows rather than limit them to isolated experiments. HP is using ChatGPT, Codex and OpenAI application programming interfaces in areas including research, analysis, software planning, user interface scaffolding and workflow automation.

Operational shift

Frontier will serve as a common layer for managing how AI systems are deployed across the business. That includes tracking which systems are in use, what information they can access, what actions they are allowed to take and how results are assessed.

HP said that structure is important for a large, distributed organisation where different teams need shared rules on access, context and review. In practice, the company is trying to create a more consistent approach as it moves AI projects from pilots into wider production use.

One area of focus is HP's channel and partner network. More than 80% of the company's business flows through partners, and more than 100,000 partners use its Partner Portal worldwide.

In that part of the business, Frontier will support self-service functions across store, partner, chat and voice channels. The goal is to give customers and partners faster answers, help them complete routine tasks and reduce manual work in areas such as programme navigation and partner operations.

Device management

Another workstream centres on HP's Workforce Experience Platform, which it uses to manage fleets of devices. The company is examining how AI can draw on device telemetry, support knowledge, operational records and runbooks to investigate crashes, Wi-Fi problems and application hangs more quickly.

That could eventually support more direct remediation, although the current focus is on improving how systems reason across available signals and support data. Shared context is central to that effort.

Cybersecurity is also a key test case. HP said teams have already used ChatGPT to address critical vulnerabilities and speed up analysis across security tools, freeing up an estimated 82 hours a week of security team time.

Governance controls within Frontier are meant to help scale that work while keeping it reviewable. Those include permissions, evaluation and deployment controls designed to govern how AI agents operate inside existing workflows.

Developer use

Software engineering appears to be one of the clearest early use cases inside HP. OpenAI tools have helped reduce delays that often build up as code passes through testing, review, security checks and handoffs between teams.

An HP engineer offered a brief reflection on that early day-to-day use. "It has been an amazing tool, and I am using it daily," the engineer said.

HP framed the partnership as an effort to create a single operating model for AI across the company rather than a collection of disconnected tools. The model is intended to link access, context, deployment and evaluation as projects move from proof of concept to production.

The breadth of the programme suggests HP is trying to apply AI across customer-facing and back-office functions at the same time. Its examples range from partner support and device management to software delivery and security operations.

That approach reflects a wider pattern among large technology groups, which are increasingly testing whether generative AI can be integrated into established processes under formal controls. At HP, the immediate focus is on turning pilot results into repeatable systems that can be deployed more widely across the organisation.

Frontier will support a broader portfolio of agents and AI workflows built across OpenAI tools, with the goal of making those systems governable as they are adopted at scale.