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OpenAI has launched a significant upgrade to ChatGPT's enterprise capabilities, transforming the chatbot from a productivity tool into a collaborative workspace hub. The updates—centered on team workflows, third-party integrations, and hardened security—represent the company's most aggressive play yet for the business AI market, currently dominated by Microsoft and Google.

🔄 Shared Projects: Persistent AI Workspaces

The new shared projects feature allows teams to create persistent chat environments where ChatGPT maintains context across sessions. When a user uploads documents or sets instructions in a shared project, the AI automatically references this knowledge base for all subsequent interactions within that workspace.

"Members can chat with the project's context to stay on the same page as new information gets added and create work that stays consistent in tone and style," OpenAI explained in its announcement.

Early adopters are using this for synchronizing contract reviews, maintaining brand voice in communications, and tracking evolving project requirements. The feature rolls out first to Business, Enterprise, and Education plans before reaching consumer tiers.

⚡ Smarter App Integrations

ChatGPT now connects directly to critical workplace tools including Gmail, Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, GitHub, Dropbox, and Box. Unlike previous implementations requiring explicit commands, the AI automatically determines which connector to access based on query context.

In demos, ChatGPT summarized project updates from email threads and surfaced relevant files from cloud storage without manual file searches. This positions ChatGPT as a central nervous system for enterprise data—a strategy mirrored by Anthropic's Claude and Zoom's AI Companion, which recently added similar integrations.

🔒 Enterprise-Grade Security

Addressing critical adoption barriers, OpenAI announced four new ISO certifications (27001, 27017, 27018, 27701) and expanded SOC 2 compliance to cover Security, Confidentiality, Availability, and Privacy. Enterprise admins gain granular controls, including:
- IP allowlisting to block unauthorized access
- Permission gates for connector usage
- Team-based feature restrictions

The Business AI Arms Race

These updates arrive amid ferocious competition for enterprise AI dominance. OpenAI now claims 5 million business users for ChatGPT, while Anthropic recently achieved a staggering $183 billion valuation largely from corporate adoption. Microsoft and Amazon are simultaneously building marketplaces for third-party AI tools, creating a layered ecosystem where infrastructure providers and model developers jockey for position.

For developers, the new APIs present opportunities to build atop ChatGPT's collaboration framework—but also underscore the risks of vendor lock-in as proprietary ecosystems mature. As AI becomes the operating system of modern work, OpenAI's latest move demonstrates that controlling the collaboration layer may prove as strategically vital as model architecture itself.

Source: ZDNet, Webb Wright, Sept. 26, 2025