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)