Uber and OpenAI announced an expansion of their partnership on Thursday, with the ride-sharing giant telling TechCrunch that all of its employees worldwide (about 30,000 people) will now be using ChatGPT Work.
ChatGPT Work was introduced in July as an enterprise-ready AI agent that corporate teams can deploy in a variety of workflows.
Uber originally piloted ChatGPT Work with 1,000 employees earlier this year and is now expanding its use across the company.
This initial pilot was rolled out to employees across Uber’s various departments, including finance, operations, and product. In fact, the majority of early adopters (about 80%) were non-engineers, Sumanth Sukumar, Uber’s vice president of engineering, told TechCrunch.
“They used it for a wide range of tasks, including analyzing complex data from our operations to identify trends and make recommendations, localizing training materials for different markets and languages, and building personalized, interactive dashboards to manage day-to-day operations,” he said.
But while the ride-hailing giant is currently going all-in on ChatGPT, it doesn’t seem to have decided exactly how its employees will use it yet. “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 combined 30 AI engineers with teams across Uber and gave them two weeks to automate key parts of their jobs. These ‘AI pods’ showed us how much opportunity there is when we combine technical expertise with a deep understanding of specific jobs.”
Uber hasn’t disclosed how much it’s spending on new chatbot deployments. Instead, the company will track how employees use the tool, Sukumar said. “We’ll be looking at how employees are using technology, the types of workflows they’re developing, and how it’s helping 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. Uber said OpenAI worked closely with the company on chatbot integration.
OpenAI has been rapidly expanding its enterprise business as it competes with its main competitor, Anthropic. Once known primarily as a consumer brand, the creators of ChatGPT quickly gained a loyal following of enterprise customers while other AI companies struggled to catch up.
If you make a purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This does not affect editorial independence.
