Report | ChatGPT creator OpenAI valued at $29 billion in talks with investors

January 6, 2023 by Rich Kurtzman, Brand Communications @ Fathym

In less than 6 weeks' time, ChatGPT has taken the world by storm.

If you haven’t heard of ChatGPT – specifically ChatGPT3 – at this point, here’s the low-down: It’s a question-and-answer computer program which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to create not only intelligent answers but writes it in a “human-like way.”

It’s really quite astonishing how well it answers questions, and for that reason, it’s already changed the world.

That’s why OpenAI’s ChatGPT is valued at $29 billion, according to the Washington Post.

OpenAI valued at $29 billion

Per the Post’s reporting, OpenAI is in talks with investors currently and looks to be valued at nearly $30 billion.

To put it in perspective among other tech giants’ values, Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October, 2022 and Adobe purchased Figma for $20 billion in September of last year.

This valuation of $29 billion puts OpenAI in smack dab in the middle of the two, and could even be seen as a “bargain” at that price, really.

Why?

ChatGPT – along with Dall-e, the AI-artwork creator – is already changing the world. And as it gets further and further dialed in, some expect it to even take over for Google as the go-to answerer of all questions.

How ChatGPT is changing the world

ChatGPT is all over the internet – from Medium to the Washington Post and more – because it really works. This is no longer a promise of AI, this is AI working on a grand, exciting scale.

Everyone can use ChatGPT, from 30-year professionals down to 7-year-olds. In fact, it’s so well-made, it’s pushing the education system to consider changes to how they evaluate writing.

Education

No longer can teachers ask students to write an essay about, say, the book The Outsiders. They can simply go to ChatGPT and write in the prompt, “Write a 5 paragraph essay about The Outsiders and, boom! In an instant, there it is. Borrowing from hundreds or even thousands of writings on the book.

We did just that and here’s what it gave us:

Professional Writing

Not only has ChatGPT impacted writing at the educational level, but for professionals, too.

In fact, we wrote last month how ChatGPT and other AI could be the end of human writers in the future. But also, how writers can fight back...for now.

In the few weeks since writing that blog post, it seems more realistic in the short term for writers to embrace and use ChatGPT to rough out ideas, outlines or the beginning of pieces. Then human writers can go in and edit, add to and manipulate what the AI wrote.

Answering questions

If you’re doing research for a paper or another type of task, asking ChatGPT is amazing for answering questions.

Asking something like, “What's the reason the sky is blue?”

To which is answers: “The sky is blue because of the way sunlight is scattered in the atmosphere. When sunlight hits the atmosphere, it is scattered in all directions by molecules and small particles. Blue light is scattered more than other colors because it travels in shorter, smaller waves. This is why we see a blue sky most of the time.”

It gives concise and accurate answers to questions, even much more complicated ones than the above example.

Can it even replace Google?

That leads many to believe it can even replace Google. (Not to toot our own horn but we guessed that in a previous blog on ChatGPT, too.)

Google is used for many different kinds of searches. Sometimes people want a sports team’s website, or to know what time a television show comes on etc. Google can simply show an image or give the user a link in those cases.

But as it’s become better over the years, many people simply ask questions right into Google and the search engine finds the most appropriate answer and shows it as the first result.

That’s basically what ChatGPT does, but with machine learning, it should be able to do it even better than Google in the near future.

That’s all dependent upon ChatGPT getting more information, being connected to the internet, and growing it’s artificial intelligence base.

While some are wondering if it can actually replace Google, others are saying not now and maybe not ever.

Google has a leg up on ChatGPT in many ways. It’s been widely embraced for many years and continues to be the norm for searching on the internet. Its knowledge base is ever-growing. And Google provides crucial information like links to websites and sources.

One CNBC reporter swapped Google for ChatGPT for a day and said she’ll stick with Google for now.

ChatGPT is extremely expensive to run currently

Also of note, ChatGPT is currently free to use on a limited, trial basis. It’s still in the experimentation phase and that’s why OpenAI has made it free for now.

In fact, @OpenAICommunity tweeted on Wednesday, Jan. 4, “I don’t know yet on which date this free phase ends.”

Interestingly, because ChatGPT has gone viral in recent weeks, the cost of operating it is astronomical per the Verge.

According to a TikTok video the Verge put out, ChatGPT costs $3 million per day to run.

Another person, Tom Goldstein, crunched the numbers and said it costs about $100,000 per day to run. Which is 30 times less than the Verge’s number, but it’s still incredibly expensive.

That giant number to run everything may be part of the reason why OpenAI was valued at $29 billion. Also, it shows that the service will certainly be pay-to-play soon.

The future of AI

AI has long been a buzzword in the tech sphere. It’s been promised as the next big thing, but we haven’t really seen much on the individual level until now.

Not only is ChatGPT going wild, but so is AI-artwork – like what LensaAI does – and soon machine learning will be put into all kinds of things we interact with every day.

For instance, our cars. Self-driving cars have been in the works for years, and they’re inching toward the finish line thanks to AI.

Beyond that, AI can be added to our security cameras to identify people, it can be used to grow crops more efficiently and effectively, and it can be used to forecast the weather.

As 2023 kicks off, we are just now scratching the surface of what AI can do.

And we are seeing just how impactful it can be, as OpenAi is valued at an astronomical $29 billion.