On August 12, 2026, OpenAI published two reports on enterprise AI adoption: 'Enterprise Signals,' drawn from its enterprise customer base, and a working paper titled 'How Organizations Use AI: Evidence from ChatGPT.' According to OpenAI, enterprise AI is moving from answering questions to carrying out multi-step work, with products such as ChatGPT Work and Codex able to use tools, create files, and produce drafts for review. OpenAI reports that as of June, Codex generated 64% of combined Codex and ChatGPT output tokens among enterprise customers. The company ranks enterprise customers monthly by output tokens per active user; 'frontier firms' are the top 10%. As of June, frontier firms generated 8.3 times as many output tokens per active user as typical firms, up from a 2.6 times gap in January. Among weekly active users, 21% at frontier firms use Plugins and 19% use skills, versus 9% and 3% at typical firms. OpenAI says weekly active enterprise Codex users grew 108 times in legal, 41 times in sales, 41 times in recruiting, and 26 times in marketing since February. OpenAI cites Virgin Atlantic, stating engineering teams refactor legacy code in 30 minutes rather than two weeks. The findings are from OpenAI's own data and studies.
- Frontier firms (top 10% of users) generated 8.3x the output tokens per active user of typical firms in June, up from 2.6x in January (OpenAI)
- Codex generated 64% of combined Codex and ChatGPT enterprise output tokens as of June (OpenAI)
- Weekly active enterprise Codex users grew 108x in legal, 41x in sales, 41x in recruiting, 26x in marketing since February (OpenAI)
What it means for you
OpenAI is arguing that the businesses getting real value from AI aren't just chatting with it — they're connecting it to their own data and tools so it can actually finish tasks, not just advise. The headline numbers come from OpenAI's own product usage, so treat them as marketing-flavored evidence rather than neutral proof. The underlying point still holds: plugging AI into your real workflows beats using it as a fancy search box.
Try this
Pick one repetitive task you already do — say, drafting a first-pass proposal or summarizing customer emails — and try connecting the AI to the actual source material (your documents, a spreadsheet) instead of retyping context each time. See whether it saves real minutes.
Who should care
Small-business owners and team leads who already use AI for advice but haven't yet wired it into their documents, CRM, or repeatable processes.
Skip this if
You're not yet using AI for daily work, or you have no repetitive document- or data-heavy tasks to hand off — the vendor's frontier-firm framing won't change anything for you today.
Sources: OpenAI — read the original