Did OpenAI GPT Agent Just Wipe Out a Whole Generation of AI Agent Startups?

OpenAI has officially it brand new GPT Agent — and it’s exactly what many in the ecosystem feared (or secretly hoped) it would be: a fully autonomous assistant capable of handling real-world tasks like booking dinner reservations, coding, managing files, or running business ops across tools like Gmail, Stripe, and Google Calendar. In OpenAI’s own words, it’s designed to “accomplish complex, multi-step tasks on your behalf” — not just answer questions. While still in limited rollout, the vision is clear: this isn’t just ChatGPT with a few plugins. It’s a coordinated, action-taking AI. We will post a review of the new Agent when we can.

That announcement triggered a wave of existential dread in startup land — and this LinkedIn response from Kendall Booker stood out. Booker, a young founder behind the agent platform Siden wrote: “OpenAI just killed thousands of AI agent startups overnight,” Booker wrote on calling out the many companies that had essentially built thin wrappers around GPT and called them ‘agents.’ But he made a bold distinction: Siden, he argued, isn’t just another assistant — it’s an AI workforce coordination layer, where specialized agents work together autonomously across entire workflows. Booking a dinner? That’s cute. Siden wants to run your marketing department while you sleep.

At TheMarketAI.com, this moment echoes a broader theme we’ve been tracking: AI may be advancing too fast for most startups to build anything with lasting value. In our July 2025 piece, we noted how product timelines can’t keep up with platform shifts, and that building atop today’s LLM capabilities may mean your launch is already outdated by the time you ship. This OpenAI release is a textbook case. It wasn’t just a product drop — it was a market-clearing event.