OpenAI, Google and Workday compete to control enterprise AI agents

Forbes frames the announcements as a contest for enterprise AI agent control: the place where a company chooses the model, sets permissions and determines who gets paid.[2] OpenAI announced on September 29 a way for large customers to spend their OpenAI budget on other vendors’ software.[2] Google followed on October 8 with what it calls “your new single, universal agent for work,” and Workday announced on October 13 that outside agents could access its HR and finance systems under Workday’s rules.[2]

OpenAI says eligible enterprise customers can now apply part of their existing OpenAI commitment to software from 32 partners, including Salesforce, ServiceNow and Harvey.[2] Forbes reports that OpenAI is not the seller of record for the marketplace and has not disclosed its margin.[2] Separately, OpenAI announced Frontier on February 5, 2026, describing a system that gives agents shared context, onboarding, hands-on learning with feedback, and clear permissions and boundaries.[3] OpenAI says HP, Intuit, Oracle, State Farm, Thermo Fisher and Uber are among Frontier’s first adopters.[3]

Google announced the Gemini agent as a single-prompt product for work ranging from answering questions to content creation and coding.[4] Google says it plans work, uses skills and tools, connects to company systems and returns completed work in existing work environments.[4] The company also says Gemini works inside Gmail, Drive, Docs, Slides, Sheets, Chat and Calendar, with the same memory, skills and controls it has elsewhere.[4] Its offering includes identity and policy management, authorization and permission controls, sandboxing, network gateways and cost controls.[4] Google reports that nearly 80% of its cloud customers use its AI products and nearly 90% of Fortune 100 companies use Gemini Enterprise.[4]

Workday says it will let outside agents access its HR and finance systems if they follow Workday’s rules.[2] Forbes says any agent using MCP can read Workday data and act on it, and that Workday customers can choose Claude, Gemini, GPT, Llama, Mistral or Nvidia’s Nemotron for agent tasks.[2] Forbes also says Workday’s Agent Harness routes tasks to a model according to cost and performance.[2] Workday says new agents continuously handle routine HR, finance and IT processes in the background.[5] For buyers, these details make system access, model choice and operating rules practical criteria to compare.[2]