Recently this month, a meeting was hosted in San Francisco, New York, and London by OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman which executives from Fortune 500 companies attended.
During these gatherings, Altman and other OpenAI executives talked about using AI for businesses, sometimes competing directly with their financial supporter, Microsoft.
These events show how OpenAI, known for popularizing generative artificial intelligence with its consumer products, is now trying to make money from big companies worldwide, even though some of these efforts might challenge Microsoft.
These meetings, held in the past week in the U.S. and on Monday in London, haven’t been reported before. Altman spoke directly to over 100 executives at each event, where he and Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap demonstrated various products.
These include ChatGPT Enterprise, an advanced version of their chatbot, software to link customer apps with their AI tools (known as APIs), and their new text-to-video models.
OpenAI has assured customers of ChatGPT Enterprise that their data won’t be used to train its models. When speaking with potential clients in sectors like finance, healthcare, and energy, OpenAI leaders mentioned various uses for the technology, such as managing call centers and translation.
They pointed out that the regular version of their chatbot is already being used by over 92% of Fortune 500 companies.
Microsoft, which is OpenAI’s biggest investor, provides access to OpenAI’s tech through its Azure cloud and sells Microsoft 365 Copilot, a tool for businesses powered by OpenAI’s models.
During the events, some attendees wondered why they should pay for ChatGPT Enterprise when they’re already Microsoft customers. Altman and Lightcap explained that paying for the enterprise service allows them to work closely with the OpenAI team, access the latest models, and have more opportunities for customized AI products.
OpenAI and Microsoft chose not to comment on this matter.
Since its chatbot, ChatGPT, became popular in late 2022, OpenAI, valued at $86 billion in its latest sale, has been working to expand its revenue sources. It’s reportedly on track to reach its $1 billion revenue target for 2024.
While OpenAI continues to develop new products like the marketplace ChatGPT stores for consumers, the company is increasingly focusing on selling to businesses as a significant source of revenue.
According to Lightcap, more than 600,000 people have signed up to use ChatGPT Enterprise and Team, a significant increase from around 150,000 in January.
Lightcap, who leads OpenAI’s efforts in getting businesses to adopt their technology, has been engaging with Hollywood studio executives to promote the company’s Sora video creation tool.
This tool, which can generate and refine videos based on a user’s text description, has stirred both excitement and concern in the creative industry.
Some major Hollywood studios are eager to analyze Sora’s applications early, although they have reservations about the source of the video used to train Sora, the reliability of its output, and its ability to protect copyrighted works.
According to a source familiar with the event, Altman participated in a question-and-answer session at a leadership retreat hosted by Fox and News Corp last October.
