By Sherry Qin


Grab Holdings is partnering with OpenAI to upgrade its popular ride-hailing and delivery app, tapping the artificial-intelligence pioneer's technology to enhance its services and integrate AI across its business.

New York-listed Grab said Thursday that the tie-up will help it update maps more quickly, build better customer-support chatbots and use text and voice capabilities to make its services more accessible to elderly customers and people with visual impairments.

Singapore-based company, whose app is one of the most widely used for food deliveries and ride-hailing in Southeast Asia, said it would make ChatGPT Enterprise, OpenAI's chatbot for large companies, available to select employees in a pilot program as part of efforts to drive wider use of AI tools across its business.

The companies didn't disclose financial terms of the deal.

The collaboration comes as OpenAI has been winning more customers, announcing partnerships with businesses in the U.S. and Europe, and building on its connection with Microsoft, its largest backer.

On Wednesday, the San Francisco-based company said PricewaterhouseCoopers would become the largest customer and first reseller of its enterprise chatbot, making it available to its 75,000 U.S. employees and 26,000 U.K. workers.

Last month, OpenAI said 600,000 individuals pay for its ChatGPT business products, and 92% of Fortune 500 companies are using the technology in some form. The company has a team of about 200 people to help sell its AI technology to companies.

The tie-up comes as Grab, which operates in eight Southeast Asian countries including Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, cuts expenses and looks for ways to leverage AI in its bid to become profitable.

This month it lifted its annual forecast for adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to between $250 million and $270 million, up from $180 million to $200 million previously, citing cost-cutting efforts and an expansion in its core businesses that helped narrow its net loss in the first quarter.

Chief Executive Anthony Tan said during an earnings call after first-quarter results that generative AI had been critical in improving efficiencies, adding that it is "one of the key reasons why we are confident about how we can continuously optimize cost levels in our regional corporate costs."

News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.


Write to Sherry Qin at sherry.qin@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

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