Emirates partners with OpenAI to accelerate Artificial Intelligence adoption and transform future aviation operations

Credit: Emirates

Emirates has entered a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to accelerate AI adoption and innovation across the airline. The partnership includes the enterprise-wide deployment of ChatGPT Enterprise, supported by tailored AI literacy programmes, technical exploration, and strategic alignment to embed advanced AI capabilities throughout the organisation.

Ali Serdar Yakut, Executive Vice President IT, said: “We see enormous potential for AI technology to support our business requirements, helping us tackle complex commercial challenges, strengthening our operations, and enhancing the customer experience. Closely working with OpenAI will make our technology investments both strategic and scalable, enabling us to deliver enhanced value to our employees and customers, fundamentally changing how we innovate, deliver value, and maintain our competitive edge in the industry.”

Rod Solaimani, Regional Director, MENA and Central Asia at OpenAI, said: “Emirates Group has laid out a bold vision for how AI can transform the future of aviation. With this collaboration, we are proud to help them bring that vision to life, embedding intelligence across their operations, empowering teams with powerful new tools, and reimagining the travel experience for millions of customers.”

As part of the collaboration, Emirates and OpenAI will explore practical AI use cases, build an internal AI champion network, and create an AI Centre of Excellence. They will assess key areas for expanding AI capability across the organisation, focusing on critical skills, processes, and technologies needed to support Emirates into its next phase of innovation.

The airline will benefit from early access to OpenAI research and emerging breakthroughs, opportunities to work on government innovation projects, and participation in accelerators. Both organisations will run leadership sessions to build support for AI initiatives and provide insight into OpenAI’s product roadmap.

Technology teams from Emirates and OpenAI will work closely to optimise model integration, establish best practices for rapid prototyping and deployment, and provide sandbox environments for experimentation with generative AI.

Emirates remains committed to using technology and innovation to deliver practical solutions that benefit travellers, communities, the wider industry, and its global portfolio of brands.