Samsung rolls out ChatGPT Enterprise and Codex in one of OpenAI's largest deployments

Samsung Electronics is deploying ChatGPT Enterprise and Codex to its workforce worldwide, in what OpenAI describes as one of its largest enterprise launches ever. The agreement covers every Samsung Electronics employee in Korea and every employee of the Device eXperience (DX) division globally, spanning the company's operations from R&D and manufacturing to marketing and corporate functions.

The scale matters. Samsung Electronics is one of the world's largest technology and manufacturing companies, and the deal signals a shift in how major industrial players treat AI: not as a specialized tool for engineering teams, but as company-wide infrastructure for knowledge work, software development, and business processes.

Samsung plans to use ChatGPT and Codex across both technical and non-technical work — software development, marketing, product development, and manufacturing among them — with the stated goal of enhancing employee productivity and problem-solving. Codex began as a software development tool, but its role inside enterprises has broadened considerably.

What employees get

With ChatGPT, Samsung employees can perform knowledge-based tasks more efficiently, according to the announcement: searching for and analyzing information, drafting documents, developing ideas, and interpreting data. ChatGPT Enterprise layers on enterprise-grade capabilities — data protection, user and access management, and security controls — that let Samsung employees use the AI within the company's existing security policies and governance framework.

That governance framing is not incidental. Large manufacturers have historically restricted consumer AI tools over fears of leaking proprietary source code and technical data into external systems. An enterprise deployment with formal access controls is the mechanism that makes company-wide adoption palatable to a company that guards its engineering secrets closely.

Codex, for its part, covers more than developer productivity. The tool handles writing, reviewing, and debugging code, but Samsung also expects non-technical teams to use it to turn ideas into working software, internal tools, websites, and automated workflows — effectively letting employees without programming backgrounds build their own applications.

The usage numbers OpenAI disclosed alongside the announcement point to how quickly that pattern is spreading. More than 5 million people now use Codex every week across technical and non-technical workflows. In Korea specifically, Codex weekly active users have grown nearly 800% since February 1, 2026.

OpenAI's read on the deal

"This historic deployment for OpenAI is particularly significant because Samsung Electronics, a global leader in technology and manufacturing, is embracing AI not as a tool limited to certain teams or functions, but as a core platform for improving how employees around the world work and innovate," said Harrison Kim, General Manager of OpenAI Korea.

Kim added that OpenAI intends to stay closely involved: "OpenAI will work closely with Samsung Electronics to help its employees level up with ChatGPT and Codex to move from ideas to execution faster, solve complex problems, and create new products and services."

The relationship between the two companies predates this deal. OpenAI and Samsung Electronics had already begun collaborating on global AI infrastructure, with Samsung working to supply the advanced memory semiconductors required for next-generation AI data centers. The ChatGPT Enterprise deployment expands that relationship from the hardware layer — chips and infrastructure — into workforce transformation and company-wide AI adoption.

That dual-track arrangement is notable for the broader market. Samsung supplies memory silicon to one of the leading AI labs while simultaneously becoming one of its largest enterprise customers. For OpenAI, the deal secures both a component supplier and a marquee reference deployment in a single relationship. For Samsung, it ties the company to OpenAI at two levels of the AI stack at once: the physical infrastructure that trains and serves models, and the software its employees use daily.

Korea as a beachhead

The Samsung deployment lands amid a broader push by OpenAI in the Korean market, and the announcement situates the deal within that context.

Seoul National University recently began providing ChatGPT Edu to all 47,000 members of its community — students, faculty, and staff — as part of its transition toward becoming an AI-native campus. OpenAI has also partnered with Kakao to let people ask ChatGPT questions and receive responses directly inside KakaoTalk group chats, placing the assistant inside Korea's most widely used everyday messaging platform.

Enterprise adoption in the country is similarly broad. Companies across a range of Korean industries now use ChatGPT Enterprise, OpenAI APIs, and Codex, including LG Electronics, LG Uplus, LG CNS, GS E&C, Samsung SDS, TVING, Krafton, Toss, MUSINSA, Korea Zinc, Nexen Tire, and HanaTour. That list spans consumer electronics, telecom, construction, gaming, fintech, e-commerce, metals, tires, and travel — an indication that AI-assisted work in Korea is no longer concentrated in the technology sector alone.

The near-800% growth in Korean Codex users since February 1, 2026 fits that pattern. So does Samsung's decision to extend access beyond its Korean workforce to the entire DX division worldwide, which houses the businesses responsible for its consumer devices, TVs, appliances, and mobile experiences.

The stakes

For the enterprise AI market, the Samsung deal is a data point in an ongoing contest over which assistant becomes the default workplace layer inside the world's largest companies. Deployments of this size — covering a workforce that spans a domestic headcount in the tens of thousands plus a global device division — tend to lock in ecosystems, shape internal tooling, and set precedents for procurement across an industry.

For Samsung, the calculus is competitive. The company has invested heavily in its own AI capabilities across its device lineup, and adopting OpenAI's tools company-wide accelerates internal productivity without waiting on in-house equivalents to mature. The manufacturing use cases in particular — applying Codex and ChatGPT to production-related workflows — point toward AI moving into industrial operations, not just office work.

What happens next will show in execution. OpenAI says it will work with Samsung employees to move from ideas to execution faster and to create new products and services, and the two companies already share an infrastructure partnership in advanced memory semiconductors for next-generation AI systems. If the deployment delivers measurable productivity gains at Samsung's scale, expect other global manufacturers to follow with similar company-wide rollouts — and expect the OpenAI–Samsung relationship to extend further across both the silicon and the software that AI runs on.