OpenAI Chief Altman Pitches ChatGPT At Corporate Events

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has addressed hundreds of executives at roadshow-like events in San Francisco, New York and London this month as the company seeks to build up its roster of corporations using the enterprise version of ChatGPT, in some cases competing directly with major investor Microsoft, Reuters reported.

Each of the three events was attended by more than 100 executives, with the two US meeetings taking place in the first week of April and the London event occuring on Monday, 8 April, the report said, citing unnamed attendees.

The meetings reportedly included demonstrations of OpenAI products including ChatGPT Enterprise, APIs for linking customer applications directly to AI services, and new text-to-video offerings.

OpenAI is seeking to build up its revenues from ChatGPT, following the generative AI’s worldwide success since the consumer version was introduced publicly in late 2022.

Corporate pitch

ChatGPT Enterprise launched last August and as of January had 260 corporate users for a total of about 150,000 employees, rising to 600,000 employees as of this month, according to comments by chief operating officer Brad Lightcap.

The product competes with enterprise AI offerings from Microsoft under its Copilot brand, which are powered by OpenAI technology and are offered via the Azure cloud service and Microsoft 365 software.

Asked by executives at the events why companies should pay for ChatGPT Enterprise if they are already a Microsoft customer, Altman and Lightcap reportedly said users would have direct access to the OpenAI team, use of the latest models and to customised AI products.

Microsoft has invested billions in OpenAI and the relationship is under scrutiny by regulators in multiple countries.

The firm earlier this month hired nearly all the AI talent of start-up Inflection, including DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, in another unusual move that was seen by some as a way of avoiding the unwelcome regulatory attention that might have accompanied an acquisition.

Expansion

Following the hires Microsoft said it would open an office in London for its consumer AI division, which could both collaborate and compete with OpenAI’s first overseas office in the same city, which it opened last year.

OpenAI, meanwhile, was valued at $86 billion £69bn) in its last secondary sale and is reportedly on track to achieve its target of $1bn in revenue this year.

Lightcap has also pitched the new Sora text-to-video tool to Hollywood studio executives, although there remain concerns about copyright and reliability.

Other sources of revenue being developed by OpenAI include its GPT Store for customised large language models (LLMs), announced last November.