Restaurant India News: Eternal Expands OpenAI Partnership to Boost AI Across Zomato and Blinkit

Shares of Eternal are expected to remain in focus on Wednesday, February 18, after the food delivery and quick commerce operator announced an expanded strategic collaboration with OpenAI to strengthen artificial intelligence capabilities across its ecosystem.

The collaboration will cover Eternal’s consumer-facing platforms including Zomato, Blinkit, District, and Hyperpure, along with partner platforms and internal systems. The partnership also extends to the company’s Feeding India initiative and its AI-native venture Nugget, reflecting a wider deployment of AI across operational and social impact verticals.

The move signals deeper AI integration within India’s food commerce value chain. With restaurants, delivery partners and enterprise suppliers increasingly dependent on platform-led demand, AI deployment is expected to influence workflows ranging from order management to search and discovery interfaces.

Eternal stated that it will leverage OpenAI’s Enterprise API platform to explore improved ways customers and partners interact with its applications. The company plans to deploy advanced AI tools within partner-facing platforms and embed contextual AI assistants into merchant and delivery partner portals. It also aims to integrate advanced coding models into its internal AI orchestration platform.

The company said it intends to deploy OpenAI models across selected use cases, including AI-assisted workflows for merchants and delivery partners, contextual AI assistants within partner portals, and experimentation around next-generation search and discovery systems. According to the statement, “These efforts are aimed at making AI useful in everyday decisions and workflows while maintaining the reliability and speed its platforms require.”

The collaboration also includes Nugget, Eternal’s AI-focused venture, where OpenAI’s models will be used in selected applications to accelerate product development and iteration cycles.

On the internal operations front, Eternal is evaluating the integration of OpenAI’s latest coding models, including GPT-5.3-Codex, into Stitch, its in-house automation and developer orchestration platform. Stitch supports automation across engineering and non-engineering functions. The company expects the integration to enhance workflow automation, reduce manual processes and improve deployment speed across teams.

Eternal and OpenAI are also exploring a structured Partner Upskilling Program aimed at increasing AI adoption across its restaurant and delivery partner network. The initiative will focus on deploying advanced AI tools within partner applications to support operational efficiency, compliance management and business decision-making.

Albinder Dhindsa, Group CEO, Eternal, said, “From high-leverage areas like software development to real on-the-ground implications of influencing operations, we are learning about the evolving implementations of newer and developing tools in the AI landscape. We are happy that this collaboration with OpenAI will open up even more surface area for us to learn and innovate.”

The expanded partnership highlights the increasing role of AI as infrastructure rather than an experimental add-on. As food delivery platforms scale and diversify into quick commerce and supply chain services, AI-led optimisation is likely to become central to merchant enablement, partner engagement and consumer experience.