OpenAI “catalyst” for startups, says European executive, amid startup application layer concerns

OpenAI is a “catalyst” for European startups, according to one of its top European executives, despite admitting there is “tension” between the ChatGPT developer and its European startup clients over OpenAI launching rival products. Tricia Troth, head of go-to-market, startups EMEA, OpenAI, responded to a question about OpenAI potentially shifting more from selling AI model access to owning the applications built around the technology.

Troth said: “We are here to be the catalyst for most of these startups. That is what we want to do. We actually work very closely with a lot of startups where we see that kind of tension, bringing them into the fold."

Troth pointed to Swedish legaltech Legora as an example in which OpenAI works with a startup it arguably competes with, after OpenAI launched a dedicated legal offering Astra for Law earlier this year.

Troth said OpenAI and Legora co-developed a legal plug in together.

Experts believe that European AI application layer startups could face growing competition from OpenAI and Anthropic, as the model giants shift focus from selling AI model access to owning the applications built around the tech.

Speaking at OpenAI Developer Day, OpenAI’s flagship developer event in London, Troth said that startups were building new business models on top of OpenAI as well as using OpenAI’s tech to make their startup more efficient.

She said: “I would say actually it was it was a bit of both. I have seen a number of customers coming out and working on existing business models. I think the ones that are most interesting to us though that are building AI natively into their products and services and finding completely new ways to do things. So, the likes of Legora and Wordsmith.”

OpenAI’s startup team, which is made up of former founders, early employees at startups and former VCs, works with startups by offering them access to its AI, helping them build products using its models, as well as connecting them with investors and developers. 

Its services span technical, engineering, fine tuning AI models, marketing and customer acquisition, Troth said. It works with startups from those at the pre-funding stage to scaleups, like Lovable and Legora. OpenAI also has relationships with VCs and other bodies which help startups.

Troth declined to name the VCs it had relationships with.

Troth said: “We do partner very closely with several different venture capital firms, from the tier ones to some of the incubators, to the accelerators, to academia. Essentially, we run a series of programmes with them, just to say, ‘which startups are you working with? Which founders are building something that is AI native that can really benefit from OpenAI? And then we kind of double down and help some of those."

At the event, OpenAI recapped some recent product highlights, including new capabilities for its engineering agent Codex, and Dots, a new AI assistant, which OpenAI says can proactively carry out tasks on a user’s behalf. OpenAI's developer day featured sessions from AI startups such as Lovable, Synthesia and Granola.