Latest news with #OliverJay
Scoop
24-07-2025
- Business
- Scoop
Air New Zealand Enters New Era Of AI Adoption With OpenAI In A New Zealand First
Air New Zealand is working with OpenAI in a first-of-its-kind collaboration in Aotearoa to expand the use of artificial intelligence (AI) across the airline, aiming to boost efficiency and enhance customer outcomes. The national carrier is part of a group of early OpenAI customers in Asia Pacific that will collaborate with the AI leader at the forefront of enterprise AI adoption. As part of the collaboration, Air New Zealand will gain direct access to OpenAI technologies to develop and apply use cases, and equip its people across corporate roles with secure, enterprise-grade AI tools. Early areas of exploration include improving customer self-service experiences and enabling safe, responsible integrated planning across airline maintenance and operations. Air New Zealand is also looking into how data-driven insights can help employees make more informed operational decisions. The agreement gives Companion AI – Air New Zealand's deployment of ChatGPT Enterprise – to all 3,500 corporate team members across the airline. Additionally, Air New Zealand will also invest in developing innovative new solutions using OpenAI APIs to enhance both customer and employee experiences with Generative AI. Implementation of OpenAI's technology is already underway, driving smarter, faster decisions and creating lasting value for the Air New Zealand team and its customers. Air New Zealand Chief Digital Officer Nikhil Ravishankar says the collaboration marks a major milestone in the airline's digital journey. 'We see AI as an opportunity for our team at Air New Zealand and a way to improve experiences for our customers. It helps us solve problems faster, serve our customers better, and reimagine how work gets done. By working directly with OpenAI, we not only access leading-edge technology but we also shape how it's used in the real world. 'This collaboration represents more than just access to new tools – it's a commitment to staying at the forefront of innovation and giving our people the best technology to thrive. We're excited to see how AI will transform the way we work.' 'Air New Zealand is taking meaningful steps to bring AI across key parts of its business using OpenAI's technology. We have been particularly impressed with how quickly they have built over 1,500 Custom GPTs to introduce efficiencies to internal focus on innovation and responsibility shows how the aviation sector can adopt advanced tools in practical ways that deliver value for both employees and customers', Oliver Jay, Managing Director of International at OpenAI, added. A Custom GPT in ChatGPT allows anyone – developers, teams, or enterprises – to create tailored AI assistants using GPT models. It enables users to define the AI's personality, tone, and specialised knowledge base, and integrate proprietary data or workflows. This makes it possible to build AI solutions for specific industries, company needs, or creative applications without requiring advanced coding expertise. Throughout this journey, Air New Zealand remains deeply committed to the responsible and ethical use of AI, ensuring that innovation is aligned with strong governance, transparency, and care for customers and employees.
Business Times
23-07-2025
- Business
- Business Times
STB, OpenAI ink MOU to drive advanced AI adoption across tourism sector
[SINGAPORE] The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) has inked a memorandum of understanding with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI to drive the adoption of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) across the city-state's tourism sector. Going beyond traditional AI systems, advanced AI can perform complex cognitive tasks and generate human-like responses – by using machine learning generative capabilities to do things like understand natural language, analyse data at scale and create personalised, context-dependent solutions. The collaboration will prepare STB and Singapore's tourism sector for an AI-driven future and lay the groundwork for the sector to benefit from the latest AI advancements, the board said on Wednesday (Jul 23). This is in line with STB's Tourism 2040 roadmap – which focuses on ensuring Singapore's tourism sector is future-ready – as it will prepare the sector for evolving technological advancements and lay the foundation for transformative changes in the travel industry. Jordan Tan, STB chief technology officer, said: 'We see tremendous potential in this collaboration with OpenAI to drive innovation and agility in the tourism sector. By leveraging OpenAI's capabilities, we envision AI as a key enabler in addressing productivity challenges and accelerating digital transformation across the sector.' Speaking on the partnership, Oliver Jay, managing director of international at OpenAI, said the company would support STB in integrating its technology across multiple applications. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Improving visitor experience Under the tie-up, STB will adopt OpenAI's technology and explore potential use cases where advanced tools and robotics can be incorporated into tourism. STB will evaluate the impact of such use cases, explore their scalability and potentially launch trials with relevant sector partners. The board will use OpenAI's capabilities to enhance visitor experiences through greater personalisation and engagement, as well as to improve organisational and industry productivity. This could range from working with tourism businesses to provide tailored recommendations and multilingual assistance, to delivering immersive storytelling initiatives that create memorable experiences, the STB said. 'These initiatives will ultimately encourage repeat visits and (serve as) advocacy for Singapore,' the STB said. Moreover, the use of advanced AI will help deepen insights, to refine destination marketing and product strategies in order to support industry stakeholders in creating responsive services, the board added. OpenAI was co-founded in 2015 by a group including CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk, the world's richest person. Musk has since left the firm due to disagreements with its direction.
Business Insider
23-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
An OpenAI exec said the company is using a new engineering role to get big customers' projects going fast
OpenAI is scaling up its global presence with a boots-on-the-ground strategy. OpenAI's international managing director, Oliver Jay, said on Wednesday at the Fortune Brainstorm AI 2025 conference in Singapore that the company has rolled out a new engineering role — the forward-deployed engineer — to help clients with their AI projects. "This new model for us, hiring our own engineers to help deploy for our largest projects, is something that we see as a really specific way to advance the acceleration of advanced AI into scale production cases," Jay said. The company has worked with a few "pilot customers" to test this new role, he added. "We like to deploy and learn from the field, and through that process, we learned a lot of techniques," Jay said. The term "forward-deployed engineer" was popularized by Palantir, the government-focused software giant. It refers to engineers who embed with clients to fine-tune the product on-site. Jay said the role was born out of a key bottleneck OpenAI noticed over the past year: Clients need to bridge the gap from trial to production. AI doesn't work like cloud software, which is straightforward to test and deploy, Jay said. "As you scale, you need advanced techniques to set guardrails, to evaluate the accuracy and the models," he added. "This is where we solve the latest gap between companies." Jay's comments come as OpenAI deepens its footprint in Asia, with offices in Singapore, Tokyo, and Seoul. The company's chief strategy officer, Jason Kwon, wrote in an X post in May that growth in ChatGPT's user base in South Korea has been "off the charts." OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. OpenAI hiring forward-deployed engineers Earlier this year, OpenAI's global head of forward-deployed engineering, Colin Jarvis, announced in a LinkedIn post that he would be leading the company's new forward-deployed engineering function. "Our focus is getting our customers to production, whether it's through a zero-to-one novel application of our tech or helping you to scale proven cases," he wrote. In a LinkedIn post last month, Jarvis said OpenAI is hiring engineering managers to "lead teams tackling the hardest real-world problems with AI," with roles available in San Francisco, New York, Dublin, London, Paris, and Munich. A current job listing for a forward-deployed engineer based in New York lists compensation between $220,000 and $280,000, plus equity. OpenAI also posted a similar role in Singapore four months ago, signaling expansion of the team into Asia. The forward-deployed software engineer model has become a launchpad for startup founders — and a powerful way to land enterprise deals. A former forward-deployed software engineer at Palantir told Business Insider the role fast-tracked the skills she needed to learn to run a startup successfully. "It's definitely founder preparation bootcamp," she said. "As a founder, you have to talk to investors, land partnerships, and be outward-facing, but you also have to put your head down, build a product, code, and be inward-facing. It's the same dynamic with being a Forward Deployed Engineer." On an episode of the "Y Combinator" podcast published last month, YC partner Diana Hu said she and her team have seen founders close "six, seven seven-figure deals" with large enterprises by being forward-deployed engineers. YC's CEO, Garry Tan, also said on the podcast that this model gives AI startups a chance to outmaneuver giants like Salesforce, Oracle, and Booz Allen.
Business Times
16-06-2025
- Health
- Business Times
Synapxe signs agreements with OpenAI, Databricks and Google Cloud to boost AI skills and solutions
[SINGAPORE] Healthtech agency Synapxe announced on Monday (Jun 16) that it has inked a number of agreements with tech players to boost its artificial intelligence (AI) talent and solutions. The agreements were inked at AI Accelerate, a conference organised by Synapxe on AI and healthcare. At the conference, Minister of Health Ong Ye Kung said: 'There must therefore be a sharp focus on practical use cases in transforming healthcare that will deliver measurable outcomes either in enhancing accuracy and speed of diagnosis, improving treatment or prevention, or increasing productivity for healthcare professionals.' A collaboration agreement was signed with OpenAI to work on skills and to apply its technology in the healthcare setting. A prototype has been developed to facilitate transactional services such as booking appointments and answering general healthcare questions. The interactions are excluded from training OpenAI's model by default. Oliver Jay, managing director of OpenAI's international strategy and openrations, said: 'This collaboration will help us to understand how our technology can meet real needs in the public system. It also offers a chance to test and refine our systems in ways that could scale globally.' BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Synapse also signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with data, analytics and AI platform company Databricks to promote adoption of AI in the public healthcare sector. The partnership is targeting to train and certify 50 to 100 public healthcare professionals via Health Empowerment through Advanced Learning & Intelligent eXchange (Healix) Data and AI Academy. The partnerships will also include experimentation and adoption of AI use cases and co-developing predictive care use cases. Databrick's AI capabilities will also be integrated into Healix's platform. Cecily Ng, vice-president and general manager for Asean and greater China, Databricks, said: 'This partnership comes at a pivotal time as Singapore faces increasing pressure on its public healthcare system and an unprecedented surge in data complexity.' Another MOU was also inked with Google Cloud to enhance Synapxe's AI platforms Healix and Tandem. This partnership will train and certify at least 300 healthcare professionals in Google Cloud's AI technologies. Biannual workshops on GenAI and data analytics will also be organised as part of the partnership. Synapxe has also signed a MOU with Aidx Tech to identify AI risks and ensure compliance with healthcare standards. Aidx's platform will be used to test AI models, with the healthtech agency aiming to establish an AI safety and compliance joint testing lab with Aidx. There is no timeline for when the centre will be set up. Aidx's AI testing tools will be customised for Synapxe's operational needs and both will collaborate on aligning with frameworks such as ISO 42001 and the EU AI Act. Ngiam Siew Ying, chief executive officer of Synapxe said: 'AI holds immense promise for transforming healthcare through innovation. By harnessing its capabilities, we are developing solutions that enhance predictive and personalised care and improve health outcomes for everyone.'
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, hopes to join Singapore's ‘thriving AI ecosystem' with new office
Singapore is set to become a hub for OpenAI as the ChatGPT developer eyes a regional expansion. The Southeast Asian country has 'emerged as a leader in artificial intelligence,' CEO Sam Altman said in a statement, according to CNA. The AI developer hopes to partner with Singapore's 'thriving AI ecosystem,' he added. The new office will support customers and partners in the Asia-Pacific region, and strengthen relationships with governments, businesses, and institutions. The office plans to hire as many as 10 employees before 2025, reports the Straits Times. The office is the AI developer's second in Asia, following the opening of a Japan office earlier this year. OpenAI already has local partnerships in Singapore, including one with ride-hailing firm Grab announced at the end of May. The agreement gives Grab access to OpenAI's technical expertise to develop solutions specific to Southeast Asia. One of Grab's former board members, Oliver Jay, now serves as OpenAI's managing director of international operations. Singaporeans are some of the heaviest users of ChatGPT on a per capita basis, OpenAI claimed in its Wednesday statement, according to Bloomberg. In 2019, Singapore became one of the first countries to adopt a national AI strategy. The country not only hopes to attract investments in AI, but also wants to leverage its access to data collected as a hub for goods and services. Singapore's plan to keep up with AI giants like the U.S. and China is meant to ensure that residents can 'compete on quality,' Simon Chesterman, vice provost at the National University of Singapore, said at the Fortune Brainstorm AI Singapore conference in July. The country is also taking the lead in ensuring that Southeast Asia is better represented in the digital space through measures like the Southeast Asian Languages in One Network project (SEA-LION), an initiative to build a model that incorporates Southeast Asian languages. On Wednesday, OpenAI also announced a partnership with AI Singapore, a joint government-academic project to encourage AI adoption. The ChatGPT developer is providing up to $1 million to help 'ensure AI models are better suited to Southeast Asia's diverse languages and cultures.' This story was originally featured on
