Uber extends ChatGPT Work to its 30,000-person global workforce

Uber has expanded ChatGPT Work to its entire global workforce of about 30,000 people, extending a pilot that began earlier this year with 1,000 employees. The rollout was announced jointly with OpenAI, whose enterprise-focused AI agent was introduced in July.

The initial deployment spanned finance, operations and product teams. Sumanth Sukumar, Uber’s vice president of engineering, said about 80% of the early adopters were non-engineers, signalling that the programme was aimed at day-to-day business work rather than solely at software development.

From pilot workflows to company-wide access

During the pilot, employees used ChatGPT Work to analyse complex operational data, identify trends and develop recommendations. Other uses included localising training materials for different markets and languages, and creating personalised interactive dashboards for managing daily work.

Uber has not defined a single mandatory pattern for the company-wide deployment. Sukumar said the company intends to make the AI tools broadly available while allowing teams to experiment with workflows that match their particular responsibilities.

That approach reflects an earlier internal exercise in which Uber paired 30 AI engineers with teams across the business for two weeks. Those “AI pods” were tasked with automating key parts of each team’s work, combining technical expertise with knowledge of the job being performed.

Measuring use rather than announcing a fixed return

Uber did not disclose what it is spending on the expanded ChatGPT Work rollout. Instead, it plans to monitor how employees use the technology, the workflows they build and whether the tool helps them work more effectively. The findings will guide how the company deploys AI across the business.

The expansion arrives as OpenAI accelerates its enterprise push while competing with Anthropic. The scale of business adoption is also visible in 20 million ChatGPT Work users, which reported 20 million ChatGPT Work users as OpenAI builds its corporate customer base.

OpenAI worked closely with Uber on integrating the chatbot, but the announcement leaves teams room to determine where it fits. For businesses, the practical implication is that wide AI access should be accompanied by observation of real workflows and evaluation of outcomes before a broader operating model is fixed.