One of the most popular startups in Silicon Valley right now is OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed developer of ChatGPT, a very chatbot that can write a poem, a college essay or even a line of software code. Is.
Tesla tycoon Elon Musk was an early investor in OpenAI, and Microsoft is said to be in talks for an initial investment of $1 billion to $10 billion to challenge Google’s globally dominant search engine. doing.
If agreed, the cash injection from the Windows maker would value OpenAI at a total of $29 billion, making it a rare achievement in the tech world at a time when big players like Amazon, Meta and Twitter are cutting costs. and are laying off staff.
“Microsoft is clearly being aggressive on this front and won’t hold back on what could be a game-changing AI investment,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives.
Before the release of ChatGPT, OpenAI surprised tech geeks with Dall-E 2, a software that creates digital images with a simple set of instructions.
Microsoft, which has made no secret of its AI ambitions, has integrated Dall-E 2 into several of its applications and now, according to a Bloomberg report, into its Bing search engine to compete with tech giant Google. Chet wants to graft GPT.
Since ChatGPT was introduced in November, the expertise of this chatbot has sparked the curiosity and interest of internet users.
It has the ability to generate detailed and human-like responses to a wide range of subjects in seconds, raising concerns that it is vulnerable to misuse by school fraudsters or misinformation.
‘Not cheap’
AI expert Rob Wilson, founder of software company OneReach.ai, said the surprising success is due to OpenAI’s clever marketing strategy of making its research accessible to non-experts.
“Having this technology available to technologists was one thing. Presenting it in the chat user interface and allowing non-developers to start playing with it sparked a conversation,” he said.
Founded in late 2015, OpenAI is led by Sam Altman, a 37-year-old entrepreneur and former president of startup incubator Y Combinator.
The company has relied on financial support from prestigious partners since its inception, including LinkedIn co-founder Reed Hoffman, investors Peter Thiel and Musk.
The billionaire served on OpenAI’s board until 2018, but left to focus on electric vehicle company Tesla.
The startup also relies on a team of computer scientists and researchers led by Ilya Sutskever, a former Google executive who specializes in machine learning.
OpenAI, which did not respond to inquiries from AFP, had about 200 employees by 2021, according to a direct query on ChatGPT.
For now, despite the excitement generated by ChatGPT, the company has yet to find its way to financial independence.
Founded as a nonprofit, the startup became a “capped-for-profit” company in 2019 to attract more investors, and co-founder Greg Brockman said this week that a paid version of ChatGPT is in the works. Is.
For a company with high costs, seeking funding seems essential.
In a Twitter exchange with Musk in early December, Altman acknowledged that every conversation on ChatGPT costs OpenAI several US cents.
Tom Goldstein, an associate professor in the University of Maryland’s computer science department, estimates the company is spending $100,000 a day on its bot, or about $3 million a month.
A partnership with Microsoft, which provides its remote computing services to startups, may cut costs, but “by no means, it’s cheap,” Goldstein said.
“Some say it’s wasteful to put that kind of resource into a demo,” he added.
