In the evening of November 29, Mira Murati, the Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, returned home from the company’s San Francisco offices. Her team had just released an experimental product called ChatGPT. Initially intended as a research demonstration, ChatGPT unexpectedly gained 1 million users within five days of launch. This sudden surge in popularity propelled OpenAI into a race to commercialize generative AI, which encompasses AI systems that can produce humanlike text, images, and content.
Murati, who drastically underestimated the response, recognized the importance of this reality check. As a result, OpenAI shifted its focus towards building and deploying the technology. Murati, alongside Chief Executive Sam Altman, leads the technology team of the 375-person company. While their new financial imperatives are important, Murati emphasizes that the company’s main goal remains unchanged: achieving artificial general intelligence and ensuring its safe deployment.
OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT, which currently boasts approximately 100 million monthly users according to SimilarWeb, has had a profound impact on the tech industry. Major players like Google have reconsidered their AI strategies and rushed to develop rival chatbots. Businesses worldwide are experimenting with generative AI, recognizing its potential to transform industries such as media, finance, law, and professional services.
Following the launch of ChatGPT, Microsoft made a substantial “multiyear, multibillion-dollar” investment in OpenAI, estimated to be worth $10 billion. Microsoft plans to integrate this technology across its Office suite of productivity apps, catering to its vast customer base of enterprise clients.
For Murati and OpenAI’s senior leadership, the rise of ChatGPT underscored the clear business value of generative AI. They are now focused on positioning ChatGPT as a standalone product, capitalizing on its popularity to engage with tens of millions of consumers. Additionally, they are developing a business subscription for ChatGPT, allowing clients to customize versions of the chatbot for specific purposes. Their recent launch of Plugins enables users to seamlessly perform tasks like web browsing, grocery shopping, and restaurant reservations while staying within the ChatGPT platform.
Murati, a mechanical engineer with previous experience at Magic Leap and Tesla, joined OpenAI in 2018 when it was still a non-profit research lab. Since then, her role has expanded to testing OpenAI’s technology in real-world scenarios, enabling industry partners to integrate AI into their products across various sectors.
OpenAI positions itself as a platform company, offering two main types of services. The first is its API, which allows third parties to incorporate OpenAI’s software into their products for a fee. The second is ChatGPT itself. Microsoft, as OpenAI’s largest shareholder, presents a third revenue channel.
Murati explains that ChatGPT allows OpenAI to directly interact with users, gathering feedback to improve their models. The API, on the other hand, provides a platform for others to build on top of OpenAI’s models. Businesses such as Khan Academy, Snap, and Morgan Stanley Wealth Management already utilize OpenAI’s API, tailoring the tool to their specific needs.
In order to fund the substantial costs of training and running large AI models, OpenAI needs to increase its revenues. Estimates suggest that ChatGPT alone costs $1 million per day to run, assuming 10 million monthly users. Microsoft has even built a supercomputer to handle OpenAI’s workload more efficiently and cost-effectively than its competitors.
While the potential risks associated with AI software, especially as it becomes more powerful, are concerns for policymakers, businesses, and researchers, Murati believes that technical “guardrails” can mitigate these risks. She emphasizes that AI systems currently function as assistive tools, enhancing productivity and creativity, rather than replacing human decision-making entirely.
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