Uber Rolls Out ChatGPT Work to All 30,000 Employees in Expanded OpenAI Partnership
Uber and OpenAI announced an expansion of their partnership on Thursday, with the ride-share giant telling TechCrunch that its entire global workforce β some 30,000 people β will now use ChatGPT Work.
From Pilot to Company-Wide Deployment
ChatGPT Work was introduced in July as an enterprise-focused AI agent that corporate teams can deploy across a range of workflows. Uber originally piloted the product with 1,000 employees earlier this year before scaling usage to the entire company.
The initial pilot spanned departments including finance, operations, and product. Notably, roughly 80% of early adopters were non-engineers, according to Sumanth Sukumar, Uber's VP of engineering.
"They used it for a wide range of tasks: analyzing complex data from our operations to identify trends and develop recommendations; localizing training materials for different markets and languages; and building personalized interactive dashboards to manage their daily work," Sukumar said.
Room to Experiment
Even as Uber goes all-in on ChatGPT, the company appears to have left the door open on exactly how employees will use it. "Our approach is to make powerful AI tools available across Uber while giving teams room to experiment," Sukumar said. "For example, earlier this year we paired 30 AI engineers with teams across Uber and gave them two weeks to automate key parts of their job. Those 'AI pods' showed us how much opportunity there is when you combine technical expertise with a deep understanding of a particular job."
Uber did not disclose how much it is spending on the expanded rollout. Instead, Sukumar said the company will track how employees use the tool. "We'll look at how employees are using the technology, the kinds of workflows they develop and how it helps them work more effectively. We'll evaluate those outcomes and use what we learn to guide how we deploy AI across the business," he said. OpenAI worked closely with Uber on integrating the chatbot, according to the company.
OpenAI's Enterprise Push
OpenAI has moved quickly to scale up its enterprise business as it competes with its chief rival, Anthropic. Once known largely as a consumer brand, the ChatGPT creator has swiftly gained a loyal following among business customers β a shift that has accelerated into 2026, as enterprise AI spending has become a defining battleground in the sector β while other AI companies have struggled to keep pace.
via TechCrunch AI