OpenAI’s AI agents need to catch up

OpenAI popularized the modern generative AI chatbot, but as its 2026 DevDay event approaches, it’s fallen behind in one of the industry’s hottest categories: continuously running, consumer-facing AI agents. On Tuesday, it will likely try to capture the lead in that race. Rumors abound that OpenAI will release its own AI agent, dubbed Aeon — its answer to Meta’s Muse, SpaceX’s Grok Bot, OpenClaw, and many more.

Aeon could have a shot at success, but to beat the competition, it would need to pull together the best features of several different agent platforms. The ideal system would be as useful as the open-source OpenClaw, as cheap and easy to set up as Meta’s Muse, and as simple to chat with as the up-and-coming Instinct. Conversely, it would aim to solve the serious security risks that have plagued agents since the rise of OpenClaw and only continued with Muse.

AI agents — platforms capable of booking travel, buying groceries, scheduling appointments, helping with work presentations, and more — have been an industry goal for years. OpenAI demoed an agentic API feature at the 2024 DevDay and released early versions of consumer-facing AI agents, focused on computer use and research, in mid-2025. It was only late last year with OpenClaw, however, that agents went from proof of concept to practical success. Since then, the race has only accelerated, while OpenAI’s visible progress around agents has lagged.

At this point, OpenAI’s primary competitor for agentic AI is likely Meta. Since its release earlier this month, Muse has topped the App Store charts and garnered 600,000 daily active users in the US, according to Apptopia. Early reviews put it in the category of useful but slightly creepy. Another contender is Instinct, whose eponymous agent has made waves for its ease of use — including the fact that users can communicate with it over iMessage and many other chat apps. And then there’s Gemini Spark, Google’s own horse in the race, which is also a 24/7-running, consumer-facing agent, with upwards of 30 external service partners, like Dropbox, Uber, and Spotify.

Competing AI agents are, according to some accounts, filling out paperwork for doctor visits, canceling subscriptions, organizing group trips, booking activities, setting up DMV appointments, paying bills, and more — paying off the expectations tech companies set years ago. But security concerns abound, particularly when agents are given more autonomy. At least one known (now patched) vulnerability allowed attackers to take control of accounts, and users have complained that Muse gave out a home address without permission and read private messages, though individual anecdotes can be hard to verify.

As of right now, little is known about Aeon. The rare thing we do know is that OpenAI currently employs the creator of OpenClaw, Peter Steinberger, who is very likely lending his expertise.

OpenAI has set expectations high for its DevDay announcements. The company has been hyping up its latest frontier model, GPT-6 Astra, as the moment around which artificial general intelligence arrives — “I think it’s not unreasonable to feel that we are now in the AGI era,” OpenAI president Greg Brockman said during a press briefing earlier this month. Astra would likely underpin whatever agent it announces, which should ostensibly make something like Aeon more powerful at cybersecurity tasks, software engineering, scientific research, and computer use.

But OpenAI is at a disadvantage in some other ways. Muse integrates with other Meta services used by billions of people, for instance, and Gemini Spark connects to Google’s wide range of enterprise and personal services. At OpenAI’s past annual events, it’s tried to bridge the gap — like last year, when OpenAI heavily pushed the new ChatGPT Apps SDK, allowing controls for other apps, like Zillow, Spotify, and Canva, to surface within the chatbot experience.

Aeon could be simply one of several things announced at OpenAI’s event. Other rumors include potential updates on the AI hardware device(s) the company is building with famed ex-Apple designer Jony Ive, a potential advancement of GPT-6 (like Astra 6.1, for instance), a hardware update, and maybe even more AGI claims. A continuously running AI agent would tie a lot of this together, which is why it’s likely OpenAI’s next big bet, particularly as the company says goodbye to “side quests.” The question is how it’ll stack up against OpenAI’s cheap, heavily integrated competitors’ agents, particularly under the immense pressure of its upcoming IPO.