Emirates partners with OpenAI for enterprise AI deployment
Dubai airline to establish enterprise AI programme, AI centre of excellence
#UAE #GenAI - Dubai’s global airline Emirates Group and artificial intelligence company OpenAI have entered into a strategic collaboration to advance AI adoption and innovation across the airline through enterprise-wide deployment of ChatGPT Enterprise. The collaboration will explore opportunities to introduce practical use cases, develop an internal AI champion network, and the airline will also establish an AI Centre of Excellence. Emirates will be supported by tailored AI literacy programmes, technical exploration and executive strategic alignment designed to embed AI capabilities across the organisation. Emirates will also gain early access to cutting-edge AI research and emerging breakthroughs, in collaboration with government-led innovation projects and accelerators.
SO WHAT? - The partnership is one of an extremely limited number formed by OpenAI in the Middle East region: the most notable other being Stargate AI, the mega-AI infrastructure project in Abu Dhabi. For OpenAI, the collaboration demonstrates traction in the highly regulated aviation sector with a global industry leader. Meanwhile, the move positions Emirates amongst the first major international airlines to deploy generative AI capabilities enterprise-wide. As one would expect with the Emirates Group, the establishment of an AI Centre of Excellence and internal champion network signals a comprehensive organisational transformation strategy rather than isolated pilot projects. As a result, the airline can be expected to pioneer how GenAI is used to address the complex commercial challenges, operational requirements and customer experience opportunities in its sector.
Here are some key points about this announcement:
Dubai-based international airline Emirates Group and San Francisco-headquartered US AI company OpenAI announced a strategic collaboration on the last day of the Dubai Airshow 2025. The partnership aims to advance AI adoption and innovation across the airline through enterprise-wide deployment of ChatGPT Enterprise supported by tailored AI literacy programmes, technical exploration and executive strategic alignment.
The collaboration will explore opportunities to introduce practical use cases, develop an internal AI champion network and establish an AI Centre of Excellence to identify key areas for enhancing and expanding AI capabilities across the organisation covering critical skills, processes and technology.
Emirates will gain early access to cutting-edge AI research and emerging breakthroughs from OpenAI, alongside collaboration on government-led innovation projects and accelerators, enabling the airline to leverage advanced capabilities as they become available.
Emirates and OpenAI will jointly run dedicated leadership sessions to explore practical applications, build sponsorship and advocacy for AI initiatives, and provide leaders with visibility into OpenAI’s product roadmap for long-term planning across the organisation.
OpenAI and Emirates technology teams will work closely to optimise integration of OpenAI’s models, establish rapid prototyping and deployment best practices, and provide sandbox environments to accelerate experimentation across various use cases powered by generative AI.
The partnership aims to tackle complex commercial challenges, strengthen operations and enhance customer experience, with technology investments designed to be both strategic and scalable whilst delivering enhanced value to employees and customers across the Emirates Group.
Emirates operates the world’s biggest fleets of Airbus A380s and Boeing 777s since launching operations in 1985 with two aircraft, offering customers latest and most efficient wide-body aircraft whilst serving a growing network of worldwide destinations.
OpenAI has grown to over 800 million weekly active users since launching ChatGPT in November 2022, catalysing global interest in generative AI with strong adoption across global enterprises, small businesses and developers worldwide.
ZOOM OUT - The UAE has become one of OpenAI’s priority markets. In May 2025, the company announced Stargate UAE in partnership with Abu Dhabi-based AI group G42 and other global tech firms, as the first international deployment of its AI infrastructure platform. The 1 Gigawatt AI campus, which will roll out its first 200MW phase in early 2026, also partners with Oracle, NVIDIA, Cisco and Japanese investment conglomerate SoftBank. Under the partnership, the UAE will become the first country worldwide to enable ChatGPT as a national cloud service, with infrastructure providing AI compute capacity within a 2,000-mile radius reaching up to half the world’s population. More recently, OpenAI partnered with the UAE AI Office to publish an AI Leadership Guide in Arabic, equipping leaders with frameworks for driving digital transformation and harnessing AI technologies across vital sectors.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]
Read more about OpenAI in the Middle East:
UAE AI Office launches AI leadership guide (Middle East AI News)
Sam Altman receives MBZUAI’s first honorary doctorate (Middle East AI News)
Tech leaders unite to build Stargate UAE AI hub (Middle East AI News)
Sam Altman’s Middle East tour (Middle East AI News)