Uber and OpenAI announced on Thursday an expanded collaboration, with the ride-sharing giant informing TechCrunch that its complete global staff of approximately 30,000 individuals will now utilize ChatGPT Work.
Introduced in July, ChatGPT Work is an AI agent tailored for enterprise use, designed for corporate teams to implement across various workflows.
After an initial pilot with 1,000 employees earlier this year, Uber has now scaled its adoption to the entire organization.
The previous pilot included staff from diverse Uber departments, including finance, operations, and product. Sumanth Sukumar, Uber’s VP of engineering, told TechCrunch that a significant majority of these early users—around 80%—were non-engineers.
“They applied it to a wide array of tasks: analyzing complex operational data to pinpoint trends and formulate recommendations; localizing training content for various markets and languages; and creating personalized interactive dashboards to manage their daily responsibilities,” he stated.
Yet, while the ride-share company is now fully committing to ChatGPT, the precise methods for employee usage are still evolving. Sukumar explained, “Our strategy is to provide powerful AI tools throughout Uber while allowing teams the flexibility to experiment. For example, earlier this year, we paired 30 AI engineers with teams across Uber and gave them two weeks to automate key aspects of their jobs. Those ‘AI pods’ highlighted the extensive opportunities available when technical expertise is combined with a deep understanding of a specific role.”
Uber did not disclose the financial investment for this new chatbot deployment. Instead, Sukumar mentioned that the company would monitor how employees utilize the tool. He commented, “We will observe how employees interact with the technology, the kinds of workflows they develop, and how it contributes to increased effectiveness. We will assess these outcomes and use our learnings to guide future AI deployments across the business.” Uber also noted that OpenAI closely partnered with the company on the chatbot’s integration.
OpenAI has rapidly moved to expand its enterprise business as it contends with its main competitor, Anthropic. Once primarily known as a consumer brand, the creator of ChatGPT has swiftly garnered a loyal customer base among businesses, while other AI companies have struggled to keep pace.