ChatGPT Turned OpenAI Into a $29 Billion Net Worth Company ...
The CEO of Open AI, Sam Altman, returned to the post after he was briefly reinstated in November 2023. His groundbreaking company brought AI to the forefront and made it accessible to the masses. A lot is known about what the Open AI-powered software ChatGPT can do, but not many people know about the company in detail. ChatGPT is a product of the company OpenAI based out of San Francisco and was founded by people like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, Ilya Sutskever, Jessica Livingston, and Reid Hoffman. As of 2023, Altman's net worth is around $500 million.
Early Ventures and Partnerships
At the age of only 19, Altman co-founded the company called Loopt. Despite raising over $30 million in venture capital for Loopt, the company was shut down in 2012 when it failed to gain attention. In 2011, he became a part-time partner at Y Combinator, a start-up accelerator that has helped more than 3000 companies to start, including Reddit, Twitch, Airbnb, Dropbox, and DoorDash. Along with Musk, Altman started OpenAI in December 2015 and invested more than $1 billion in its operation. The goal of the company is to promote user-friendly AI that will prove extremely beneficial in day-to-day activities.
Challenges and Criticisms
Critics have pointed out certain threats that the company poses, the biggest among them being the danger of data breach. There are also concerns regarding the training and other privacy issues. Open AI has also faced criticism regarding the misinformation often delivered by ChatGPT, which however is improving with time. 
ChatGPT also has a bit of bias built into its system, which has been pointed out by users time and again.
Key Individuals at OpenAI
The application is developed and owned by OpenAI, which is a leading artificial intelligence company founded in December 2015. The company was founded with the joint effort of key individuals:
- Sam Altman: A renowned investor who was previously the president of Y Combinator startup accelerator is the OpenAI CEO and also the co-founder of the location-based social networking app, Loopt. He is one of the initial board members of the company.
- Elon Musk: Tesla CEO famously invested in ChatGPT with Sam Altman and was also one of the initial board members but left the board back in 2018.
- Greg Brockman: The CTO of OpenAI, Brockman is the leader of the technical front. He was previously the owner of CTO of Stripe, a technology company that deals with online transactions.
- Ilya Sutskever: Sutskever is the Chief scientist at OpenAI. His job is to work on advancing AI research and innovation. He is an expert in his field of deep learning and has developed various neural network architectures and AI models.
- John Schulman: He is a research scientist at the company and specializes in reinforcement learning and robotics. He works in developing AI models including ChatGPT's language model.
- Wojciech Zaremba: He has played an important role in AI research, especially in the fields of robotics and reinforcement learning.
Shift to For-Profit Model and Market Success
The company came under fire when it decided to change its business model from non-profit to for-profit. According to the Swiss Bank UBS, ChatGPT is the fastest-growing platform of all time. 
The platform had 100 million active users in January 2023, which was only two months after the launch of the platform. The company's success has triggered other companies to come up with ChatGPT alternatives like Google Bard AI and Jasper.ai, and the still-under-wraps 'AppleGPT'. The platform is famous for its accuracy, community-driven nature, and potential for further improvements.
Sam Altman is back as the CEO of Open AI, with his impact being significant in the artificial intelligence ecosystem. The company's success has seen it grow rapidly and compete with other major platforms in the AI industry.
