RPA’s average annual growth rate is 25–40%, which makes it a very rare high-growth track. North America is currently the largest market, while Asia-Pacific is the fastest-growing region. UiPath is currently leading the RPA track with a 35.8% market share, and the second-place player has less than one-tenth of its share. This shows that the market is highly concentrated with an absolute leader, but it also means challengers have a clear target.
OpenAI’s approach is not to build a “better RPA tool,” but to strike at a higher level:
-
The core barrier in RPA is “being able to write scripts,” so only IT teams can maintain it, making rollout slow and costly. Codex’s core advantage is that it “doesn’t require writing scripts”; an ordinary employee can generate a Skill by demonstrating it once, wiping out the technical barrier to RPA.
-
RPA’s business model is selling licenses plus charging maintenance fees. Codex is subscription-based plus usage-based billing, with a lighter cost structure.
This is highly similar to how Figma went after Adobe back in the day—not competing on the same level, but turning professional tools into tools that everyone can use.