Emirates Group Partners with OpenAI to Accelerate AI Adoption and Innovation

Emirates has today announced a new strategic collaboration with OpenAI to advance AI adoption and innovation across the airline.  This will include group-wide deployment of ChatGPT Enterprise, supported by AI literacy programs and more.

Emirates and OpenAI Announce New Strategic Partnership at the Dubai Airshow 2025 - Courtesy Emirates

On Friday (November 21, 2025), from day five of the Dubai Airshow 2025, Emirates announced the start of a new strategic partnership with OpenAI to advance AI adoption and innovation across the airline.  This will include group-wide deployment of ChatGPT Enterprise, supported by tailored AI literacy programs, technical exploration, and executive strategic alignment designed to embed AI capabilities across the company.

In Friday’s announcement, Emirates Group’s Executive Vice President – IT, Ali Serdar Yakut, 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.”

 Also commenting on the new strategic collaboration, OpenAI’s Regional Director – MENA and Central Asia, Rod Solaimani, said,

“Emirates Group has laid out a bold vision for how AI can transform the future of aviation.  With this collaboration, we’re 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.”

With the new collaboration, Emirates and OpenAI will explore opportunities to introduce practical use cases, develop an internal AI champion network, and establish an AI Center of Excellence.  This partnership will identify key areas for enhancing and expanding AI capabilities across the organization, covering critical skills, processes and technology needed to power Emirates into the next era.  Emirates will also gain early access to cutting-edge AI research and emerging breakthroughs, as well as collaboration on government-led innovation projects and accelerators. 

Additionally, 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.  OpenAI and Emirates technology teams will also collaborate on integrating OpenAI’s models to establish rapid prototyping and deployment of best practices, and provide sandbox environments to accelerate experimentation across various use cases powered by generative AI.

Source: Emirates