OpenAI follows Meta into the red-hot market for personal agents. But will users pay?

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman delivers the keynote address during the OpenAI developers conference at Fort Mason on Sept. 29, 2026 in San Francisco, California.

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Following Meta's blockbuster release of its Muse AI agent earlier this month, OpenAI jumped into the personal agent market on Tuesday with Dots, setting the stage for what could be the next big battle in the artificial intelligence market.

At its annual DevDay developer conference, OpenAI described Dots as "always-on" agents designed to help users complete a range of tasks. Since the release of Muse three weeks ago, investors have rallied around Meta, sending the stock up 29% in September, on pace for its best month since 2013.

That level of enthusiasm underscores the power of personal agents and the promise that consumers and office workers will be able to use the technology to book travel, pay bills, respond to emails and perform many more tasks. But OpenAI's entry, arriving soon after the launch of Muse, serves as a reminder that the AI market includes a handful of large companies all converging around the same types of products with little ability to lock in users.

Google calls its Gemini Spark offering "your 24/7 personal AI agent" for help, and Apple is trying to step up its position in the AI battle with its redesigned Siri AI, which it describes as "a profoundly more capable and personal assistant."

"I think what we are watching is an inevitable evolution of the technology," said John Waldmann, CEO of HR tech startup Homebase and a user of various AI agent-related tools. "It's probably no surprise that it's all happening around the same time."

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It's not just the big companies that see the opportunity.

AI assistant startup Instinct announced Monday that it raised $1 billion from venture firms including Sequoia at a $10 billion valuation. And another startup, Town, is reportedly looking at a $1 billion valuation.

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