Uber has placed all 30,000 of its global staff onto the ChatGPT Work platform following an expanded partnership with OpenAI announced on Thursday.
The enterprise tool launched in July for corporate teams to deploy across various workflows. Uber first tested it with 1,000 employees earlier this year before rolling it out to the whole company.
Sumanth Sukumar, Uber’s VP of engineering, told TechCrunch that a majority of the early adopters were non-engineers, accounting for around 80% of the initial group. These workers came from finance, operations, and product departments.
Users applied the software to a wide range of tasks: analysing complex operational data to identify trends and develop recommendations; localising training materials for different markets and languages; and building personalised interactive dashboards to manage daily work.
The ride-share giant has gone all-in on the technology but has not settled 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 the company paired 30 AI engineers with teams across Uber and gave them two weeks to automate key parts of their job. Those ‘AI pods’ showed the potential when technical expertise combines with a deep understanding of a particular job.
Uber did not disclose the cost of the new rollout. Instead, the company will track how staff 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,” Sukumar said. “We’ll evaluate those outcomes and use what we learn to guide how we deploy AI across the business.”
OpenAI has moved quickly to scale 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 with business customers, while other AI companies have struggled to keep up.
What it means
Staff now have access to the tool without needing to request permission. The company intends to measure actual usage and workflow outcomes to decide how to expand AI across the business.
