ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Uber is expanding its partnership with OpenAI by giving more than 30,000 employees access to ChatGPT Work. The announcement comes weeks after the ride-hailing company cut thousands of corporate jobs, raising fresh questions about how artificial intelligence is changing the workplace.

Uber is rolling out OpenAI's ChatGPT Work to more than 30,000 employees across its global workforce, expanding the company's use of artificial intelligence beyond software engineering and into everyday corporate operations.

The company announced the expansion on October 22, following an earlier pilot involving approximately 1,000 employees. The deployment gives teams across Uber access to an AI agent designed to handle complex, multi-step tasks and help produce finished work.

The announcement comes shortly after Uber revealed plans to reduce its corporate workforce by about 10%, or roughly 3,300 positions. Although the timing has attracted attention, Uber has not said that the new ChatGPT Work deployment caused or was directly connected to those job cuts.

According to OpenAI's announcement, the expansion represents Uber's first company-wide deployment of an agentic platform tailored to knowledge work.

What ChatGPT Work Will Do at Uber

ChatGPT Work is designed to help employees complete tasks that involve several steps, rather than simply responding to individual questions.

The platform can connect with workplace applications such as Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar and Slack. This allows employees to use AI to research information, prepare meeting briefs, create presentations, analyze data and complete workflows across different applications.

For example, an employee could use the system to gather information from company documents, analyze relevant data and prepare a structured report. Another employee might use it to organize a meeting, summarize information or develop a presentation.

Uber says the rollout will support teams across operations, finance, marketing and product development. The company is also providing an internal AI skills library, approved integrations and employee training to help workers use the technology.

Software engineers at Uber will continue using OpenAI's Codex for coding-related work, while ChatGPT Work will support a wider range of corporate tasks.

Uber Chief Technology Officer Praveen Neppalli Naga said the company wants to give employees tools to innovate, solve problems and contribute to Uber's future as AI changes how people work.

From a 1,000-Person Pilot to the Entire Company

Uber's decision follows an earlier test of ChatGPT Work involving approximately 1,000 employees from different departments.

According to TechCrunch, around 80% of the early adopters were not engineers. The pilot included workers in areas such as finance, operations and product development.

Employees used the technology to analyze operational data, identify trends, develop recommendations, localize training materials for different markets and create interactive dashboards.

Uber also experimented with teams that brought AI engineers together with other departments. In one initiative, 30 AI engineers worked with teams across the company for two weeks to identify and automate parts of their jobs.

The experiment reflects a broader shift in how companies are approaching AI. Rather than limiting the technology to specialist developers, businesses are increasingly testing whether it can assist employees in roles involving research, communication, analysis and administration.

However, Uber has not disclosed the total cost of the new rollout or published figures showing how much time the pilot saved. The company says it will evaluate employee usage, the workflows developed and the effectiveness of the technology before deciding how to expand its use further.

The Timing Raises Questions About Jobs

The expansion comes after Uber announced a major restructuring in September 2026. Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said the company would reduce its workforce by approximately 10% as part of an effort to simplify its organizational structure, remove management layers and focus investment on its largest opportunities.

In his September 2 message to employees, Khosrowshahi described the changes as an organizational restructuring. The announcement did not identify ChatGPT Work as a reason for the reductions.

Nevertheless, the expansion of AI across Uber has added to questions about how automation may affect corporate work.

Some former Uber employees have told Business Insider that AI tools had become increasingly involved in their daily responsibilities, including answering internal questions and drafting customer-service responses. These accounts highlight the growing use of AI in routine work, but they do not establish that ChatGPT Work was responsible for the September job cuts.

Uber has also previously cited AI in connection with changes to customer-service operations. The company's latest announcement therefore arrives amid a wider debate about whether AI will primarily help employees become more productive, reduce the need for certain roles or lead to a combination of both outcomes.

The distinction matters. Making an AI tool available to employees is not the same as proving that it can replace their jobs. The effects depend on how the technology is used, which tasks it can perform reliably and how companies choose to reorganize their workforces.

Uber's AI Strategy Is Expanding

Uber's move reflects a broader effort to integrate AI into the company's operations.

The company is not simply introducing a chatbot for employees to use occasionally. ChatGPT Work is designed to connect with workplace applications and carry out multi-step tasks, potentially changing how employees handle information and coordinate work.

For OpenAI, the deployment is also an important enterprise partnership. Providing access to more than 30,000 employees gives the company an opportunity to demonstrate how its AI agents can be used across a large global business.

OpenAI President and co-founder Greg Brockman said the expansion would allow Uber teams to connect the tools they use every day with AI capabilities and agents designed to handle more complex work.

The companies have said they plan to share further information about adoption, use cases and measurable outcomes as the rollout progresses. Those results will be important in determining whether the deployment delivers meaningful improvements in productivity.

What This Means for the Future of Work

Uber's decision illustrates how AI is moving deeper into the daily operations of large companies.

For years, many AI tools were primarily used by developers, researchers and technology specialists. The expansion of workplace agents is bringing the technology into departments that depend on communication, research, planning and data analysis.

This could change how employees spend their time. Tasks that once required several applications and manual coordination may increasingly be handled with AI assistance. Employees could then focus more heavily on decision-making, oversight, customer relationships and work that requires human judgment.

But the transition also creates challenges. Companies must ensure that AI-generated information is accurate, protect confidential data and establish clear rules about which tasks can be automated. Employees may also need new skills to supervise AI systems and evaluate their output.

There is also an important economic question: will productivity gains lead to better products and services, reduced workloads, lower costs, fewer jobs or some combination of these outcomes?

Uber's rollout does not yet provide a complete answer. The company has not released enough measurable results to establish how much the technology will improve productivity or how it will affect employment over time.

Key Facts

  • Company: Uber.
  • AI partner: OpenAI.
  • Tool: ChatGPT Work.
  • Workforce access: More than 30,000 employees globally.
  • Previous pilot: Approximately 1,000 employees.
  • Potential uses: Research, meeting briefs, presentations, data analysis and multi-application workflows.
  • Recent restructuring: Uber announced plans to cut about 3,300 corporate jobs in September 2026.
  • Important distinction: Uber has not said the ChatGPT Work rollout was responsible for those job cuts.
  • Outstanding details: The total cost and measurable productivity results of the company-wide deployment have not been disclosed.

The Bigger Picture

Uber's expansion of ChatGPT Work is another sign that AI is becoming part of the infrastructure of modern businesses. The technology is moving beyond answering questions and assisting developers toward handling more complex tasks across entire organizations.

The timing, following thousands of job cuts, makes the development especially significant. However, the available information does not establish a direct connection between the two decisions.

The next measure of success will be what Uber can demonstrate: whether employees complete work more effectively, whether the company sees measurable productivity gains and how those changes affect the organization over time.

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