OpenAI recently announced a major collaboration with Samsung Electronics, providing the enterprise version of ChatGPT and the Codex development platform to over 120,000 Samsung employees worldwide. This is the largest enterprise-level deployment contract that OpenAI has ever signed, marking the official entry of enterprise AI applications into an era of scale.

According to the agreement, Samsung Electronics will grant access to ChatGPT and Codex for all employees in South Korea, as well as global employees in the Device Experience (DX) department. As of the end of 2024, Samsung Electronics has approximately 262,000 global employees, including about 51,000 in the DX department and 78,000 in the DS department. This deployment covers multiple core business areas such as software development, marketing, product development, and manufacturing, aiming to significantly improve work efficiency and problem-solving capabilities.

From Programming Tools to General Platforms

Notably, Codex was initially positioned as a software development tool, but it has now evolved into a general platform that supports non-technical positions. It has been widely used for business process automation and internal network service setup. OpenAI revealed that weekly active users of Codex have exceeded 5 million, with the number of weekly active users in South Korea increasing by nearly 800% since February this year. Samsung employees will use the enterprise version of ChatGPT and Codex to complete daily tasks such as information retrieval, data analysis, document writing, and creative development.

The enterprise version of ChatGPT has been specifically enhanced in terms of data protection, user permission management, and security controls to ensure that employees can use advanced AI technology in compliance with company security policies and governance frameworks. Kim Kyung-hoon, head of OpenAI in South Korea, stated that this deployment marks the upgrade of AI from a local tool to a strategic platform for enhancing the working methods of global Samsung employees, which holds significant importance in the development history of OpenAI.

Collaboration Goes Beyond Software

Their collaboration also extends to the hardware level. OpenAI and Samsung will deepen cooperation on the supply of high-end storage semiconductors required for next-generation AI infrastructure, expanding the scope of collaboration from a simple supply chain to employee business innovation and comprehensive AI transformation.

In fact, the trend of Korean companies introducing generative AI as an infrastructure is accelerating. Companies such as LG Electronics, LG U+, Samsung SDS, and Kakao have already adopted the enterprise version of ChatGPT or the OpenAI API. In particular, Samsung SDS became the first ChatGPT enterprise version reseller in South Korea last December, and within two months of signing the agreement, it reached partnerships with more than ten companies. With this super order from Samsung, the era of large-scale enterprise AI applications may have already arrived.