Today, artificial intelligence has captured the attention of all Internet users, both enthusiasts and professionals. Many people are now using tools powered by this technology in their daily lives, and as in every field, there are always names that resonate more than others, such as OpenAI.
For this reason, we have decided to provide a review of the history of this AI development company that has gained great fame for being behind systems like DALL-E and ChatGPT.
OpenAI is a technology company founded in 2015 by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Trevor Blackwell, Vicki Cheung, Andrej Karpathy, Durk Kingma, John Schulman, Pamela Vagata, and Wojciech Zaremba.
Additionally, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and the companies Amazon Web Services, Infosys, and YC Research, acted as donors (along with Sam Altman and Elon Musk themselves), contributing 1,100 million dollars. The goal of this investment was to form a team of AI experts to develop the project safely and with the aim of becoming a useful tool for everyone.
Initially, OpenAI started as a non-profit organization with a vision to advance AI developments safely and significantly contribute to society. It aimed to foster collaboration among professionals and the publication of the work done, making this knowledge accessible to the world.
In February 2018, Elon Musk left the board of OpenAI. According to some reports and media statements, his departure from the project was due to Altman and the rest of OpenAI’s board rejecting the idea of Musk taking control of the company.
Years later, in 2024, Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, in the Superior Court of San Francisco for breach of contract. The magnate claimed that the developer had shifted towards pursuing its own economic profit, moving away from its original goal of achieving a public open-source general AI.
Currently, while OpenAI continues to be governed by a non-profit organization, since 2019 it has maintained a unique capped-profit model. Likewise, it is the non-profit organization, through its board of directors, that governs and oversees the profit-generating activities.
OpenAI’s strong position in the market of generative AIs was shaken at the end of 2023 due to a series of internal changes, starting with the dismissal of Sam Altman (CEO) and other company executives on November 17.
Three days later, Emmett Shear was appointed the new CEO of OpenAI. Shear, co-founder and former CEO of Twitch, has a more moderate view of AI advancements compared to Altman. However, the pressures exerted by investors (including Microsoft) and the majority of OpenAI employees bore fruit, and Sam Altman regained his position as CEO on November 22.
In October 2024, OpenAI made history by closing the largest funding round in history. The developer raised no less than 7,260 million dollars (approximately 6.539M€). A figure that propelled OpenAI’s valuation to 172 billion dollars (approximately 156.200 M€), positioning it well above other AI companies.
The main investor of the operation was Thrive Capital, which invested around 1,430 million dollars (1.296M€), with an exclusive option to invest up to an additional 1,100 million dollars at the same valuation (until 2025). Microsoft, Nvidia, SoftBank, Khosla Ventures, Altimeter Capital, Fidelity, and MGX also participated as investors.
These companies would have placed the condition to change the corporate structure of OpenAI within the next two years to remove the cap on economic benefits that investors can receive. This would mean transitioning from a non-profit entity to a for-profit organization.
However, OpenAI stated, «The non-profit organization is fundamental to our mission and will continue to exist».
One of the first measures taken by Donald Trump upon assuming the position of President of the United States was to announce the Stargate project. This public-private collaboration seeks to position the country as the epicenter of AI.
OpenAI is one of the technology companies participating in the project, alongside Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and Arm. The main financiers are SoftBank, Oracle, MGX, and also OpenAI.
Stargate contemplates an estimated investment of 550,000 million dollars (approximately 527.092 M€) in AI infrastructures over four years. Its main objective is to build a network of advanced data centers and promote the development of practical AI applications in key areas (health, security, and economy).
However, just one day after the Stargate project was made public, a third party emerged: Elon Musk. The magnate, owner of Tesla and newly appointed Administrator of the White House Government Efficiency Department, accused the CEO of OpenAI of being a «fraudster», claiming he does not have enough money to develop the project.
For his part, Sam Altman responded to Musk in more diplomatic terms: «You are mistaken, as you surely know. Do you want to come to visit the first site that is already underway? This is excellent for the country. I realize that what is good for the country is not always optimal for your companies, but in your new role, I hope that, for the most part, you will put America first».
OpenAI has developed innovative products in the field of AI. Two of its most prominent creations are ChatGPT and DALL-E.
ChatGPT, possibly the company’s most popular product, is a chatbot based on an AI language model with which users can perform text tasks such as drafting articles, asking questions, requesting corrections, etc. Currently, there are six ChatGPT plans, one free and five paid, with features varying according to the users’ needs.
Over the last few years, OpenAI has developed various generative text AI models that it has integrated into the different ChatGPT plans to boost the performance of its chatbot. These are the most relevant:
For its part, DALL-E is among the best image-generating AIs and has been trained on an immense library of artworks and photographs. To date, there are three updates to this tool, with the most recent being DALLE-3.
Currently, this AI has integrated into ChatGPT, but it is also possible to use DALLE-3 for free by accessing Bing’s chatbot.
Photo: Depositphotos
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
Δ