OpenAI's GPT-6.1 Sol will serve as the default model, providing a balance between performance and operating costs. Released last month, the model costs approximately one-fifth as much as OpenAI's most capable offering. Employees will also have access to other OpenAI models and features, including voice interactions and image generation.
The decision follows an initial trial involving staff from several departments, including finance, operations, and product development. According to Uber Vice President of Engineering Sumanth Sukumar, approximately 80% of the pilot participants worked outside engineering.
During the trial, employees used ChatGPT Work to identify patterns in operational data, develop recommendations, adapt training resources for different languages and markets, and create interactive dashboards for managing their responsibilities.
The company is now making those capabilities available more broadly without prescribing a single set of workflows for every department.
Uber previously explored a similar approach through an internal initiative that assigned 30 AI engineers to teams throughout the company. Over two weeks, those groups worked together to automate important portions of employees' existing responsibilities, helping identify opportunities for wider AI adoption.
The ChatGPT Work deployment will be accompanied by employee training, an internal collection of AI skills, and integrations approved for company use. Uber expects employees in marketing, finance, operations, product, and other business functions to develop applications suited to their work.
Software engineers will continue using OpenAI's Codex for programming and development tasks, rather than relying exclusively on ChatGPT Work.
"As AI transforms how we work, we want to give everyone the tools to innovate, solve problems and help shape Uber’s future," said Uber Chief Technology Officer Praveen Neppalli Naga.
The expansion also comes as Uber reassesses its spending on AI services. In August, Neppalli Naga indicated that the company's earlier approach of aggressively consuming AI tokens, known as "tokenmaxxing," was coming to an end. Uber had reportedly exhausted its entire 2026 budget for Anthropic's Claude Code by April.
The company has also connected AI adoption to workforce changes. In July, Uber eliminated 10% of its customer-service positions, marking its first publicly identified round of layoffs linked to an increased reliance on AI.
Uber has not disclosed the financial terms of its expanded ChatGPT Work agreement. Instead, executives say they intend to evaluate the technology through employee adoption, the workflows teams develop, and improvements in how work gets completed.
"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."
For OpenAI, the agreement extends an existing relationship with Uber and expands the reach of ChatGPT Work, which debuted in July as an enterprise agent capable of executing multi-step assignments.
Unlike a conventional chatbot focused on responding to individual prompts, ChatGPT Work is designed to carry out longer processes using information and tools available through connected workplace applications. That allows employees to delegate tasks involving multiple steps rather than manually moving between services.
"Now teams across Uber can tap into our portfolio of frontier models and agents to take on more complex work, connect the tools they use every day, and get more done," said OpenAI President and co-founder Greg Brockman.
Both companies plan to provide additional information about how employees adopt the technology, which applications prove useful, and what measurable results emerge from the deployment. Uber's immediate focus is on giving its global workforce access to the agent while using those findings to guide future AI investments.
This analysis is based on reporting from OpenAI & TNW.
Image courtesy of Business Upturn.
This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.
