April 21 (Reuters) - OpenAI said on Tuesday 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 ), Capgemini,

CGI, Cognizant, Infosys, PwC and Tata

Consultancy Services 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 ( MSFT ), Google and

Amazon ( AMZN ) 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.

(Reporting by Kritika Lamba in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika

Syamnath)