OpenAI, partnering with business digitalization platform Thrive Holdings, announced a tax AI agent with adaptive self-evolution capabilities for the Crete professional alliance, which operates a network of over 30 accounting firms. In operation, accountants' everyday corrections during tax filing are automatically converted into test cases. The Codex model then generates code patches from those tests and submits them as pull requests for programmer review. This closed loop — “accountants flag errors, AI writes patches, programmers review” — compresses the typical software bug-fix cycle from hours to seconds, balancing rapid agent evolution with strict compliance.
In a pilot, the agent processed 7,000 complex tax forms (types 1040 and 1041). After six weeks of deployment, the proportion of returns achieving a 75% field accuracy threshold jumped from an initial 25% to 86%, and the system’s best field accuracy reached 97%. On the ground, the agent saved accountants roughly one-third of their preparation time per return and boosted overall throughput by about 50%.
The collaboration originated from OpenAI’s equity investment in Thrive Holdings in December 2025. Unlike conventional AI vendor-led deployments, the agreement stipulates that all intellectual property and final products related to the tax AI belong to Thrive Holdings, while OpenAI sends engineers for joint development. This IP isolation model preserves vertical-sector companies’ technological and product sovereignty during AI transformation.