An OpenAI exec explains how his growing team helps companies move from AI hype to adoption (www.businessinsider.com)

OpenAI’s head of forward-deployed engineering, Colin Jarvis, explained how a small, growing team embeds with customers to convert AI hype into production value — “tens of millions to sometimes the low billions.” The team (39 engineers now, planned 52 by year-end) works on-site with enterprise clients to build scaffolding, pilots, and product playbooks rather than selling ongoing services; OpenAI lists 24 global openings for the function with US pay up to $345,000. The forward-deployed model, popularized by Palantir, has become a go-to way to translate foundation models into reliable, auditable systems at scale and is being adopted across startups and incumbents. Jarvis gave concrete examples of the model’s impact: a GPT-4 deployment at Morgan Stanley required six to eight weeks of technical scaffolding plus four months of pilots and iteration to reach roughly 98% advisor adoption, while a European semiconductor customer received a “debug investigation and triage agent” after engineers were found spending 70–80% of their time on debugging. The approach focuses on zero-to-one builds and scalable playbooks, shortens time-to-production, de-risks adoption, and has attracted investor attention as a competitive edge for AI startups.