OpenAI has announced that it is expanding partnerships with major global consulting firms to speed up enterprise adoption of its ​Codex artificial intelligence tools, as competition in the ‌rapidly evolving AI market intensifies.

It is also launching Codex Labs, which will place OpenAI specialists directly inside customer organizations to ​help integrate the technology into existing systems and ​workflows.

The ChatGPT‑maker said it is working with global ⁠systems integrators including Accenture (ACN.N), Capgemini (CAPP.PA), CGI, Cognizant (CTSH.O), Infosys (INFY.NS), ​PwC and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS.NS) to help large companies ​identify and deploy Codex across their software development operations.

The move comes as OpenAI faces increasing pressure from rivals such as Anthropic, ​whose Claude models have gained traction with corporate customers ​for coding, reasoning and enterprise deployments.

Larger technology firms including Microsoft, Google ‌and ⁠Amazon are also investing heavily to differentiate their AI offerings for businesses.

As part of a broader strategic shift, OpenAI has in recent months scaled back or ​shut down some ​smaller experimental ⁠initiatives, including projects such as Sora, as it concentrates resources on core products such as Codex and ChatGPT.

Codex ​is designed to automate parts of the ​software ⁠development lifecycle, including writing, reviewing and reasoning about code.

OpenAI said weekly usage of Codex has climbed sharply in ⁠recent ​weeks, with more than 4 million ​developers now using it, up from around 3 million earlier this month.