OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed developer of ChatGPT, a much-hyped chatbot that can write a poem, college essay, or even a line of software code, is the hottest startup in Silicon Valley right now. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, was an early investor in OpenAI, and Microsoft is said to be in talks to increase its initial investment from $1 billion to $10 billion in order to compete with Google’s world-dominating search engine.
If agreed upon, the cash injection from Microsoft would value OpenAI at a whopping $29 billion, making it a rare tech-world success at a time when major players like Amazon, Meta, and Twitter are cutting costs and laying off employees.
Prior to the release of ChatGPT, OpenAI wowed tech enthusiasts with Dall-E 2, a software that generates digital images with a single command.
Microsoft, which has made no secret of its AI ambitions, has integrated Dall-E 2 into several of its applications, and now, according to Bloomberg, the tech giant wants to graft ChatGPT to its Bing search engine in order to compete with Google.
Since its debut in November, the prowess of ChatGPT has piqued the interest and fascination of internet users. It is capable of providing detailed and human-like answers on a wide range of subjects in a matter of seconds, raising concerns that it could be abused by school cheats or used for disinformation.
Sam Altman, a 37-year-old entrepreneur and former president of startup incubator Y Combinator, founded OpenAI in late 2015. From the beginning, the company has relied on the financial support of prestigious contributors such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, investor Peter Thiel, and Musk.
Altman admitted to Musk on Twitter in early December that each conversation on ChatGPT costs OpenAI several US cents. According to Tom Goldstein, an associate professor in the computer science department at the University of Maryland, the company is paying $100,000 per day for its bot, or about $3 million per month.
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