# OpenAI Consulting Alliances and Uber AV Strategy

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-02-24

## Transcript

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Uber wants to be a Swiss army knife for robo-taxis.
I'm Imran Sheik and your daily crunch for Tuesday starts right now.
OpenAI is beefing up partnerships with four major consulting giants as the AI company looks to grow its enterprise business in 2026.
Now, OpenAI announced on Monday the Frontier Alliances, a signal that the AI lab is willing to try different approaches to get enterprises to meaningfully adopt its technology.
The alliance includes multi-year partnerships between OpenAI and four major consulting firms, Boston Consulting Group, BCG, McKinsey, Accenture, and Capgev.
OpenAI's forward-deployed engineering team will work with the consulting giants to help them implement OpenAI's enterprise-focused technologies like OpenAI Frontier into customers' tech stacks.
The company launched OpenAI Frontier in early February.
The no-code open software allows users to build, deploy, and manage AI agents both built on OpenAI's AI models and beyond.
OpenAI argues in its latest announcement that consultants are the right avenue to get enterprises on board.
Thus far, enterprise adoption of AI has been relatively, well, slow as these companies struggle to find a meaningful return on investment from their AI pursuits.
OpenAI's alliance strategy makes sense and goes beyond just pitching enterprises on attaching AI to their existing workflows.
Instead, this effort focuses on consultants persuading companies to change their strategies and workflows, to fold in OpenAI's tools where it makes sense.
It's worth noting that OpenAI rival Anthropic has inked deals with consulting giants too, including Deloitte and Accenture in recent months.
Tesla's battle with the California Department of Motor Vehicles isn't over after all.
You see, Tesla has filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Motor Vehicles in an attempt to overturn an agency ruling.
The state DMV ruled that Tesla used deceptive marketing to overstate the automated driving capabilities of its vehicles, thereby violating state law.
The lawsuit reignites an issue that appeared to be resolved last week when the DMV said it would not suspend Tesla's sales and manufacturing licenses for 30 days.
This was because the EV maker complied with the ruling and stopped using the term autopilot in its California marketing materials.
CNBC was first to report the lawsuit.
Now, the DMV could have taken action against Tesla, but it chose not to even though an administrative law judge agreed with the DMV's request to suspend Tesla's licenses for 30 days as a penalty.
So, instead of pulling its licenses, the state regulator gave Tesla 60 days to comply.
And Tesla did, although in the most extreme ways.
You see, Tesla didn't just stop using the term autopilot.
In January, it discontinued autopilot altogether in the US and Canada.
Perhaps it regrets that decision now and is looking for a way to bring it back.
Uber's got a new pitch for autonomous vehicle makers.
We got this.
You see, the ride-hailing and food delivery company has launched a new division called Uber Autonomous Solutions, designed to take on all the tasks associated with operating a robo-taxi, self-driving truck, or sidewalk delivery robot businesses, including software and support services.
The initiative, announced on Monday, formalizes what Uber's been not-so-quietly working on for several years now.
You see, Uber has amassed partnerships with nearly two dozen autonomous vehicle technology companies across every use case, from robo-taxis and trucking to sidewalk delivery robots and drones.
Uber's backed many of these companies.
Lucid and Neuro...
Wabi and China's WeRide invested $100 million to build fast charging, autonomous vehicle charging stations, and even launched Uber AV Labs, a specialized engineering team that'll gather data for RoboTaxi partners.
So Uber's made the partnerships and investments.
Now it wants to make itself indispensable.
AV tech teams should be able to focus on what they do best.
building software that can safely power an autonomous world, said Sarfraz Meridia, Uber's global head of autonomous mobility and delivery, who will be leading the initiative.
The idea, he said, is to add operational depth wherever they need it, including demand generation, rider experience, customer support, or managing the day-to-day fleet operations.
The end goal here is to help these companies reduce their costs per mile and increase the speed to market.
You see, Uber said it plans to help these partners scale robo-taxi deployments to more than 15 cities by the end of this year.
The new division also plans to tackle user experience, including customer support.
Now, notably, Uber wants to take over fleet management, which would include remote assistance, an issue that recently received attention from federal lawmakers over concerns Waymo uses workers overseas.
Folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Kirsten Korosek and Rebecca Skutak and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
We'll see you here tomorrow.
Same Tech Time, same Crunch Channel.
And until then, find us at techcrunch.com.
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