ChatGPT runs at a high cost. It cost around $7lac per day to run it. Microsoft and other investors in OpenAI cover these costs out of their pockets. If OpenAI does not show profits soon, the investors could turn off the tap. The company could go bankrupt, sooner rather then later.
It is the Microsoft investment that keeps the company going. The losses are mounting. San Altman, the CEO does not own any equity in OpenAI. The company was non-profit to begin with, but later became profit company. The user visits are shrinking — from 1.9 billion to1.7 billion to 1.5 billion. It could be on account of API cannibalisation . They use API to leverage the LLM. The shrinkage can also be attributed to the rise of open source LLM models such as Llama 2 in partnershing with Microsoft.
There is also a shortage of the graphics processing units (GPUs). It affects OpenAIs capacity to improve and develop new models.
There could be competition from Musk promoted rival chat bot TruthGPT which has already purchased 10000 Nvidia GPUs to get going.
It is to be seen how the shift to paid version works financially for OpenAI. It is possible the company can go in for an IPO. It could then be taken over by bigger companies.
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