AI rumor mill

Apple and Nvidia want to invest in OpenAI

The ChatGPT text robot from OpenAI has triggered a veritable AI hype and already has a financially strong investor in Microsoft. Now Apple and Nvidia are also said to be interested.

(Bild: REUTERS)

The AI chatbot ChatGPT has cracked the 200 million user mark. This means that the number of users active at least once a month has doubled since November last year, according to the developer company OpenAI. Growth is likely to continue at a rapid pace, as the company is hoping to attract two financially strong new investors.

ChatGPT is the chatbot that triggered the hype surrounding artificial intelligence over a year ago. Such AI programs are trained with huge amounts of information and can formulate texts at the linguistic level of a human.

The Facebook group Meta quickly countered with figures for its rival program. MetaAI now has 400 million monthly active users, and 185 million access it at least once a week, wrote company boss Mark Zuckerberg on the short message service Threads. The company integrates MetaAI into its apps with several billion users.

Apple and Nvidia show interest
ChatGPT can write software code and summarize information. The principle behind it is that it estimates word for word how a sentence should continue. According to media reports, OpenAI is currently in the process of raising fresh capital in a financing round at a total valuation of around 100 billion dollars. Apple and the semiconductor company Nvidia are said to be among the potential investors.

Both companies could be very important partners for the future of ChatGPT. The iPhone company brought OpenAI on board as a partner in June. While the company's own AI software is intended for users' personal information, ChatGPT will be available for general questions. The iPhone platform should therefore bring the chatbot many new users.

Nvidia processors lead the way in AI
Nvidia's chips play a central role in data centers for applications with artificial intelligence. They are expensive and their next generation, called Blackwell, will only be available in small quantities, at least after the market launch in the coming months.

To date, Microsoft is by far the largest investor in ChatGPT. OpenAI has used the billions from the software giant to finance the further development of the chatbot. Microsoft is now integrating the start-up's technology into all of its products.