OpenAI has fallen behind competitors in the rapidly growing AI agents market and is expected to announce its own agent platform, codenamed Aeon, at its upcoming DevDay event on Tuesday. The company that popularised modern generative AI chatbots now faces serious competition from Meta's Muse, Google's Gemini Spark, and other platforms that can autonomously handle real-world tasks like booking travel, paying bills, and scheduling appointments. To succeed, Aeon would need to combine the practicality of open-source platforms, the affordability and ease of Meta's offering, and the user-friendly interface of competitors, whilst addressing significant security vulnerabilities that have plagued existing agents.

Meta's Muse has dominated the market since its release earlier this month, reaching 600,000 daily active users in the US and topping the App Store charts, whilst other agents have demonstrated practical success in automating everyday tasks. OpenAI has some advantages, including its new GPT-6 Astra frontier model (which executives claim marks the arrival of artificial general intelligence) and employment of Peter Steinberger, who created the pioneering OpenClaw platform. However, OpenAI faces disadvantages in integration capabilities compared to rivals: Meta's Muse leverages billions of existing Meta service users, whilst Gemini Spark connects to Google's extensive enterprise and personal services ecosystem.