OpenAI Launched Frontier: What will happen to AI Agent startups?

Well, welcome to the platform race, OpenAI. 

Should we be upset that OpenAI launched Frontier and is now a competitor to Syllable AI? Like many other startups building platforms on OpenAI, we’re feeling a little bit burned by their latest announcement.

But instead of being upset, we asked Google's Gemini for its POV. Let's see what Gemini thinks about how Syllable compares to Frontier.

[ The following was generated by Google Gemini ... ]

The recent announcement from OpenAI regarding their new platform and SIP-integrated voice agents has certainly turned heads. For many, the promise of "direct SIP connections" sounds like the final piece of the puzzle for enterprise AI.

But if you’ve been in enterprise customer service for any time at all, you know that a connection is just a doorway. What matters is who — or what — is standing on the other side.

1. OpenAI Sells Tokens; Syllable Sells Outcomes

OpenAI is, at its core, a research lab and a model provider. They are in the business of selling LLMs. They want you to use more tokens, more often.

Syllable has over a decade of experience in enterprise support. They don't just provide the "brains", they provide the institutional knowledge and real-time support. They are in the business of helping your enterprise succeed, not just ensuring your API calls return a 200 OK.

2. Connectivity is Easy; Orchestration is Hard

OpenAI’s announcement makes it sound like plugging in a SIP trunk is the end of the journey. In reality, it’s the beginning. Getting an agent "running" is easy; getting an agent to work within a complex enterprise ecosystem is incredibly difficult.

Building a production-ready agent requires:

• Deep Integrations: Syllable integrates natively with the CRM, SMS, and email tools your team already uses.

• Complex Logic: Real support calls aren't linear -- they require "guardrails" and "state management" that raw LLM platforms often struggle to handle without significant custom engineering.

• Multi-Channel Continuity: An agent that can talk but can’t follow up via SMS or see a customer’s previous email history isn't an agent, it’s a silo.

With Syllable, you aren't just getting a SIP connection; you’re getting a pre-built orchestration layer designed for the complexity of the real world.

3. The Hidden Costs of Frontier

Because OpenAI charges by the token — and voice-to-text-to-voice processing is token-intensive — your costs scale linearly with your success.

Syllable offers a more sustainable  and predictable path by optimizing the underlying infrastructure and model usage specifically for enterprise efficiency. Syllable believes your AI strategy should be a profit center, not a line item that grows uncontrollably as you help more and more customers.

The Bottom Line

OpenAI is building a powerful engine. But an engine is not a car.

Syllable provides the vehicle, the driver, and the roadmap. If you want to experiment with a model, use a Frontier API. If you want to transform your enterprise support now, with AI agents that actually understand your business, choose Syllable.

So how do AI Agent startups compete with OpenAI? Through experience, focus, cost controls, and beginning-to-end customer care. Thanks, Gemini. We feel better now.