OpenAI’s product strategy for agents is moving from technical users toward mainstream office work, according to a TechCrunch interview with Thibault Sottiaux, the company’s head of product. TechCrunch describes ChatGPT Work as a platform for white-collar workers to use AI agents, and Sottiaux framed it as an attempt to bring the capabilities of coding agents to a broader audience. Sottiaux told TechCrunch he leads OpenAI’s core products: the application programming interface, agent infrastructure, enterprise products, all of ChatGPT, and Codex. That remit includes ChatGPT Work, ChatGPT classic, and the software-engineering tool Codex. He also said he reports to Greg Brockman, while adding informally that “everyone reports to Greg at the end of the day.” The central product claim in the interview is that OpenAI wants to make agentic systems usable outside the developer base that first adopted Codex. Sottiaux said Codex was built for a more forgiving technical audience, while ChatGPT Work is meant to package similar capabilities in a way that is safer and easier to use for a wider population. He also said OpenAI wants the product to work across mobile and web. Sottiaux said OpenAI launched ChatGPT Work as part of the Plus plan, which he described as priced at $20 a month. His argument to TechCrunch was that broader availability is part of the point: OpenAI wants to make the technology accessible to as many users as possible rather than reserving agent workflows for technical teams. TechCrunch asked Sottiaux about analysts’ argument that OpenAI needs to own the application relationship with users. Sottiaux answered in product-value terms. He said the more utility OpenAI creates for users, the more willing users will be to pay for some part of that utility. On public acceptance of artificial intelligence, Sottiaux said OpenAI has a role in “bringing everyone along” with the technology. He told TechCrunch that OpenAI feels the technology has reached a level of maturity where broader diffusion is now the right step. He described the new form factor as one where ChatGPT can handle complicated tasks more autonomously, while OpenAI tries to make that experience safe and usable. The interview does not provide adoption figures, usage data, or independent evidence that ChatGPT Work is winning over nontechnical users. It does, however, clarify how TechCrunch and Sottiaux describe the offering: a platform for white-collar workers that packages coding-agent capabilities for a broader audience. Who benefits: OpenAI benefits if it can extend agent usage from Codex’s technical audience into broader ChatGPT workflows. Plus subscribers are the users Sottiaux identified for a plan he described as $20 a month. Who's exposed: The interview does not identify specific competitors or customers at risk. Based on the provided material, it is too early to say who is exposed.