Article last updated on:
November 01, 2023

OpenAI is a non-profit research company that aims to develop and direct artificial intelligence (AI) in ways that benefit humanity as a whole.

The company was founded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman in 2015 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

OpenAI uses 28 technology products and services including HTML5, jQuery, and Google Analytics, according to G2 Stack.

Source: Tech Target, Crunchbase, Stack G2, The Information

About OpenAI Company Overview

Key StatsKey Info
Launch DateDecember 11, 2015
Head QuarterPioneer Building, San Francisco, California, US
Founder(s)Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, Ilya Sutskever, Jessica Livingston, Reid Hoffman, and Elon Musk (rtd).
OpenAI ProductsChatGPT, GPT, GPT API, Dactyl, OpenAI Gym, Codex(GitHub Copilot), CLIP, OpenAI API and OpenAI Scholars
OpenAI IndustryArtificial intelligence
Business TypeAI research and deployment company
OpenAI ValuationUSD 29 Billion (2023)
OpenAI Total FundingUSD 11.3 Billion
Number of Employees1300+ Employees (2023)
OpenAI Daily Active Users400k DAU
Official Websitehttp://openai.com

Source: OpenAI, LinkedIn, The Information

Some Amazing Facts About OpenAI

  • Microsoft has invested a total of $11 billion in Open AI. $1 billion in 2019 and $10 in 2023
  • ChatGPT has over 180.5 million users and generates $80 million in revenue per month.
  • ChatGPT is the fastest-growing consumer app in history, reaching 100 million users in just 5 days.
  • OpenAI is valued at $29 billion and is seeking a new valuation up to $90 billion due to higher revenues from ChatGPT.
  • In December 2015, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and other investors announced the formation of OpenAI and pledged over US$1 billion to the venture
  • The OpenAI Startup Fund revealed that it led a $23.5 million investment in Mem
  • In September 2020, Microsoft purchased an exclusive license to immediately incorporate GPT-3 into its own products.
  • Microsoft became the sole and exclusive cloud provider of OpenAI products in 2019 thanks to a $1 billion investment in OpenAI.
  • OpenAI Codex is most capable in Python, but it is also proficient in over a dozen languages including JavaScript, Go, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Swift and TypeScript, and even Shell.
  • OpenAI Codex is now available to the public through the OpenAI API.
  • OpenAI’s researchers showed that with enough parameters and training data, a single deep learning model could perform several tasks without the need for retraining
  • ChatGPT is trained on GPT-4, which has 175 billion parameters and receives 10 million queries per day.

Source: Analytics India Mag, BNN Bloomberg, Glassdoor, The Verge, OpenAI

OpenAI Valuation

OpenAI’s valuation is projected to surpass $80 billion by the end of 2023, with a steady increase in valuation over the years: reaching USD 29 billion in 2023, USD 20 billion in 2022, and USD 260 million in 2021.

OpenAI Valuation
YearOpenAI Valuation
2023USD 29 Billion
2022USD 20 Billion
2021USD 260 Million

Source: The Information, Techcrunch, Sacra

OpenAI Revenue

OpenAI’s revenue has experienced steady growth over the years, from $13.81 million in 2016 to $1.3 billion in 2023.

OpenAI Revenue
YearRevenue
2023$1.3 billion
2022$200 million
2021$34 million
2020$3.48 million
2019$31. 93 million
2018$49.97 million
2017$33.23 million
2016$13.81 million

Source: ProPublica, Sacra

OpenAI Profit

OpenAI’s profit varied over the years, with a loss of -$9.5 million in 2020 and a profit of $28.6 million in 2019. In 2018, they incurred a loss of -$1.6 million, while 2017 saw a profit of $4.6 million and 2016 brought in $2.6 million in profit.

OpenAI Profit
YearProfit
2020-$9,508,759
2019$28,599,812
2018-$1,580,378
2017$4,560,437
2016$2,569,398

Source: ProPublica

How Does OpenAI Make Money?

Revenue StreamDescription
LicensingOpenAI licenses its AI technologies to other companies, like Microsoft for GPT-3.
API feesDevelopers are charged for using OpenAI’s APIs, e.g., Codex API.
SubscriptionsOpenAI offers subscription-based products (ChatGPT Plus and OpenAI Playground Plus) with added features.
Grants and donationsFunding from research grants and donations supports OpenAI.

Open AI Funding, Investors, Investments and Acquisitions

OpenAI Funding History

OpenAI has raised $11.3B in funding through 10 rounds, with the latest funding of an undisclosed amount from a Secondary Market round on Aug 14, 2023. Notable rounds include a $10B Corporate Round in Jan 23, 2023, a $300M Venture Round in Apr 28, 2023, a $250K Seed Round in Nov 28, 2022, and a $3M Series A round in Nov 25, 2022.

Announced DateTransaction NameMoney Raised
Aug 14, 2023Secondary Market – OpenAI
Apr 28, 2023Venture Round – OpenAI$300M
Jan 23, 2023Corporate Round – OpenAI$10B
Nov 28, 2022Seed Round – OpenAI$250K
Nov 25, 2022Series A – OpenAI$3M
Jan 1, 2022Secondary Market – OpenAI
Jan 1, 2021Secondary Market – OpenAI
Jul 23, 2019Corporate Round – OpenAI$1B
Mar 11, 2019Seed Round – OpenAI
Aug 22, 2016Pre Seed Round – OpenAI$120K

Source: Crunchbase

Open AI Fund Raised

OpenAI announced the OpenAI Startup Fund on May 26, 2021, raising a total of $100M. This single venture fund contributed to their fundraising efforts.

Announced DateFund NameMoney Raised
May 26, 2021OpenAI Startup Fund$100M

Source: Crunchbase

Who are the Top OpenAI Investors?

OpenAI is funded by 17 investors, including Arrowshare Ventures and Thrive Capital as the most recent investors. Popular investors in OpenAI include Microsoft, Y Combinator, and Bedrock Capital.

Investor NameFunding Round
Arrowshare VenturesSecondary Market – OpenAI
Thrive CapitalVenture Round – OpenAI
SVAVenture Round – OpenAI
Andreessen HorowitzVenture Round – OpenAI
Founders FundVenture Round – OpenAI
AlphabetVenture Round – OpenAI
Wisdom VenturesVenture Round – OpenAI
K2 GlobalVenture Round – OpenAI
Sequoia CapitalVenture Round – OpenAI
Tiger Global ManagementVenture Round – OpenAI
Bedrock CapitalVenture Round – OpenAI
MicrosoftCorporate Round – OpenAI
Khosla VenturesVenture Round – OpenAI
Reid Hoffman FoundationVenture Round – OpenAI
Y CombinatorPre-Seed Round – OpenAI

Source: Crunchbase

OpenAI Investments History

OpenAI has made 8 investments, with their most recent being a $98K investment in KudoAI on Sep 16, 2023.

Announced DateOrganization NameMoney Raised
Sep 16, 2023KudoAI$98K
Jul 24, 2023Acroo Labs£2.4M
Jul 18, 2023American Journalism Project$5M
May 1, 2023Oikeus.AI
May 1, 2023Ava$4.6M
Nov 7, 2022EdgeDB$15M
Oct 27, 2022Descript$50M
Apr 25, 2022Ambience Healthcare$30M

Source: Crunchbase

Open AI Acquisitions

OpenAI acquired Global Illumination on Aug 16, 2023, for $100M.

Announced DateAcquiree NamePriceTransaction Name
Aug 16, 2023Global Illumination$100MGlobal Illumination acquired by OpenAI

Source: Crunchbase

Open AI Machine Learning Startups Funding

Open AI, the creators of Dall-E and ChatGPT, received over $1 billion in funding in 2022, making them the most funded Machine Learning Operations/Platform startup.

Most funded machine learning startups
ML StartupsOpen AI Funding
OpenAI$1 billion
Scale AI$602.86 million
Anyscale$259 million
Inflection AI$225 million
Weights & Biases$200 million
Cohere.ai$165 million

Source: Statista

Leading AI Tools

55% of marketers in the United States use ChatGPT for their marketing purposes, making it a widely-used AI tool in the industry.

Leading AI Tools for marketers
AI ToolsShare of Marketers
ChatGPT55%
Copy,ai42%
Jasper,ai36%
Peppertype.ai29%
Lensa28%
DALL-E25%
MidJourney24%

Source: Statista

ChatGPT Monthly Active Users

The MAU of ChatGPT grew from 57 million in 2022 to 100 million by January 2023.

ChatGPT Monthly Active Users
YearChatGPT Monthly Active Users
2023100 million MAU
202257 million MAU

Source: Statista

OpenAI Users Demographic Stats

OpenAI Users by Gender

56.11% of openai.com visitors are male, while 43.89% are female.

OpenAI Users by Gender
OpenAI User GenderDistribution
Male56.11%
Female43.89%

Source: SimilarWeb

OpenAI Users by Age Group

The majority of openai.com visitors, 33.53%, are between the ages of 25 and 34. This is followed by the age groups 18-24 (27.93%), 35-44 (18.39%), 45-54 (11.22%), 55-64 (5.59%), and finally 64 years or older (3.35%).

OpenAI Users by Age Group
OpenAI User Age GroupDistribution
18 – 2427.93%
25 – 3433.53%
35 – 4418.39%
45 – 5411.22%
55 – 645.59%
64+3.35%

Source: SimilarWeb

What country visits openai.com the most?

The United States leads with 14.91% of traffic on openai.com, followed by India (8.13%), Colombia (3.98%), the Philippines (3.62%), and Japan (3.23%). Other countries make up the remaining 66.13%.

What country visits openai.com the most?
CountryTraffic share
United States of America14.91%
India8.13%
Colombia3.98%
Philippines3.62%
Japan3.23%
Others66.13%

Source: SimilarWeb

Is OpenAI available worldwide?

OpenAI is currently accessible in 164 countries, which includes the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan.

Source: OpenAI

Countries where OpenAI/ChatGPT isn’t available

OpenAI or ChatGPT is not currently available in the following countries: Sudan, Libya, North Korea, Afghanistan, Yemen, Chad, Syria, South Sudan, Eswatini, Eritrea, China and more.

Source: OpenAI

OpenAI Popularity Among AI Startups

OpenAI’s popularity among AI startups has been steadily increasing, with a significant rise in search numbers. In 2017, there were 50,000 searches, and by 2023, this number reached 1,800,000.

OpenAI Popularity Among AI Startups
YearNumber of Search by AI Startups
20231,800,000
2022319,000
2021105,000
2020102,000
201990,000
201875,000
201750,000

Source: Meet Glimpse

How many AI Developers use OpenAI?

  • OpenAI DALL-E has more than three million (3,000,000), active developers, using the model to train algorithms.
  • OpenAI Debate Game has more than 600 participants in 2022
  • OpenAI Gym has more than 923 active developers using the model to train robots.

Source: OpenAI, Axios

OpenAI Competitors Analysis

OrganizationLocationRevenue
Merit NetworkAnn Arbor, MI$28,602,952
National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM)Blairsville, PA$37,384,642
MXD USAChicago, IL$10,302,345
WiscNetMadison, WI$8,451,316
Thirty Meter Telescope International Observatory (TIO)Pasadena, CA$35,210,500
California Emerging Technology FundConcord, CA$35,210,093
US IgniteWashington, DC$9,852,960
National Institute of Building SciencesWashington, DC$16,799,172
Farmers Conservation AllianceHood River, OR$21,617,774
Internet2Ann Arbor, MI$74,976,240

Source: CauseIQ

Who founded OpenAI?

OpenAI was founded in 2015 by a group of notable figures including Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, Ilya Sutskever, Jessica Livingston, and Reid Hoffman. Elon Musk was also a co-founder, but he left the company in 2018.

Net Worth of OpenAI Founders

FounderNet Worth
Sam Altman$500 million
Peter Thiel$7 Billion
Ilya Sutskever$13 million
Jessica Livingston$100 billion
Reid Hoffman$3 billion
Elon Musk$210 billion

Source: Celebrity Net Worth, BiographyScoop, Peopleai.com

Key People At OpenAI

NameTitle
Sam AltmanCEO
Brad LightcapCOO
Greg BrockmanPresident, Chairman, and Co-Founder
Ilya SutskeverCo-Founder and Chief Scientist
Wojciech ZarembaCo-Founder
Mira MuratiChief Technology Officer
Bob McGrewVP of Research
Peter WelinderVP of Product and Partnerships

Source: Craft.co

How many people work at OpenAI?

OpenAI’s employee count has grown from 6 in 2015 to 1372 in 2023, demonstrating significant expansion.

How many people work at OpenAI?
YearNumber of Employees
20231372 employees
2022335 employees
2021220 employees
2020120 employees
2019100 employees
201852 employees
201745 employees
201625 employees
20156 employees

Source: Crunchbase, Craft, OpenAIPitchbookGrowjo

What is the salary of OpenAI Employees?

OpenAI’s approximate revenue per employee is $947,522. Here are some examples of yearly salaries for roles at OpenAI:

What is the salary of OpenAI Employees?
Open AI Employee RoleExpected Salary
Research Manager$471,915 per year
Software Engineer$286,018 per year
Research Scientist$273,112 per year
Full Stack Developer$273,112 per year
Developer$217,793 per year
Human Resources Manager$160,000 per year
Human Resources Generalist$160,000 per year

Source: Indeed, Growjo

Frequently Asked Questions About OpenAI

What is OpenAI used for?

OpenAI is a non-profit research company that aims to develop and direct artificial intelligence (AI) in ways that benefit humanity as a whole.

Source: Tech Target

How Does OpenAI work?

OpenAI is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) research laboratory and company. They’ve created various AI-powered programs and machine learning algorithms that allow computers to do all sorts of things like creating images from text or making a robot hand that solves Rubik’s Cubes.

source: MOU

What Type of AI Tool does OpenAI offer?

OpeAI ToolAboutYear of Release
GPTA powerful language model for text generation, understanding, and completion. Used in various natural language processing tasks.2020
GPT APIAn API that allows developers to integrate GPT into their applications, enabling natural language understanding.2020
DactylA robotic hand designed for dexterous manipulation and hand-eye coordination in robotics research.2018
OpenAI GymAn open-source platform for developing and comparing reinforcement learning algorithms, offering various environments for training and testing.2016
CodexAn AI pair programmer developed in partnership with GitHub, helping developers write and understand code more efficiently.2021
CLIPA model that understands images and text, useful for image classification, object detection, and text-image matching.2021
OpenAI APIA platform that provides access to OpenAI’s models and services, including GPT-3 and CLIP, through APIs.2020
ChatGPTAn AI model tailored for interactive and chatbot-style conversations, extending the capabilities of GPT for chat-like interactions.2021
DALL-E 2A model that can generate realistic images and art from a description in natural language.2023
WhisperA speech recognition and translation model that is trained on a large dataset of diverse audio.2022
PlaygroundA web-based tool that allows users to interact with OpenAI’s AI models.2020

Is OpenAI Free?

OpenAI offers some free products and services, such as the OpenAI Playground and API. It also offers subscription-based products and services, such as ChatGPT Plus and OpenAI Codex Plus.

Is GPT-4 OpenAI open to the Public?

Yes, GPT-4, the latest model in the GPT series, was released by OpenAI on March 14, 2023. It is accessible to the public through OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus, a paid chatbot service, and via OpenAI’s API.

Is OpenAI a For-Profit Company?

Elon Musk and Sam Altman launched OpenAI as a nonprofit organization for artificial intelligence research; however, Musk eventually left the organization, and it is now officially a for-profit business.

Source: Futurism

Why did Elon Musk leave OpenAI?

Elon Musk decided to leave OpenAI, due to disagreements about the company’s development.

Source: BNN Bloomberg

What are the Top Business Applications Powered by OpenAI GPT?

Basically, GPT-3 powered applications aim to automate the workload for better productivity.

Some of the applications include:

  • Algolia – is the best search and discovery platform for a business while empowering Builders to build top-notch experiences. It provides consumers seamless access to product catalogues through this AI model of OpenAI, GPT-3.
  • MessageBird – offers an omnichannel communications platform with the integration of a GPT-3 powered tool. It helps to enhance every interaction while optimizing authentications and video meetings for marketing and sales.
  • Debuild.co – is one of the top GPT-3 powered apps to help in building website apps efficiently and effectively. It helps to generate SQL code and assemble an interface visually all in one click. It leverages this AI model to create an autonomous system for writing software at the level of the most skilled engineers.
  • Tabulate – leverages the AI model known as GPT-3 to combine industry accounting professionals with proprietary technology for delivering the best financial back-office service. It offers bookkeeping, payroll, analytics, accounts payable, tax preparation, and many more.
  • CopyAI – is well-known as a GPT-3 powered tool to automate creativity tools and generate marketing copies within a short period of time efficiently. Businesses can use this AI model for digital ad copy, social media content, website copy, eCommerce copy, blog content, and sales copy.
  • AI Channel – is one of the top GPT-3 powered apps and a social network platform for allowing collaboration with artificial intelligence agents. It helps companies or individuals to have a conversation with the AI model to understand natural language. The AI Channel app interface is like a messaging application UI including a directory of different conversations.
  • Snazzy AI – is known for providing the simplest way to create content with GPT-3. Multiple services include creating landing pages, copywriting, Google Ads, and many more with just three clicks.
  • Writesonic – is one of the well-known GPT-3 powered apps to boost the website SEO for generating more traffic. This AI model generates high-quality articles, emails, blogs, landing pages, and many more within a short period of time.
  • Grok – is a popular GPT-3 powered tool that utilizes the advanced AI model known as GPT-3 to summarize the on-demand and daily digest of subscribed channels. It can summarize the last 30 messages in any Slack channel with the Grok Conversation Summary.
  • Otherside AI – offers HyperWrite which is one of the top GPT-3 powered applications as the most powerful document editor to compose beautiful content within a few minutes. It leverages the most advanced AI model to write content efficiently and effectively. This GPT-3 powered tool helps to modify texts as longer, shorter, casual, formal, and many more.

Source: Analytics Insight

Who are the top 10 AI developers who created GPT-3-powered applications?

  • HTML Layout Generator by Sharif Shameem
  • ‘Designer’ plugin for Figma by Jordan Singer
  • Ask me anything Search Engine by Paras Chopra
  • Machine Learning code generator by Matt Shumer
  • Chart generator by Plotly
  • Python code-generating chatbot by Joseph
  • Write this like an attorney by Francis Jervis
  • Quick Response by OthersideAI
  • Balance sheet generator by Yash Dani
  • Spreadsheet value generation by Paul Katsen

Source: Medium

How many apps were developed using OpenAI GPT?

More than 300 applications were developed using GPT-3 in the first nine months.

Source: OpenAI

How many words can GPT generate?

OpenAI generated more than 4.5 billion words per day in 2021.

Source: OpenAI

How many words were trained using GPT-3 per day in 2021?

GPT-3 has trained on 500 billion words. That’s nearly ten thousand years of continuous speech at about 100 words per minute.

Source: YCombinator

How long can it take to train GPT-4?

The exact time it takes to train GPT-4 depends on a number of factors, including the size of the model, the amount of data it is trained on, and the hardware used for training. However, it is estimated that it can take anywhere from 90 to 100 days to train a GPT-4 model on a large supercomputer.

Source: Towards Data Science

How many Nodes does GPT-3 have?

GPT-3 has 96 layers and 175 billion nodes (weights or parameters) arranged in various ways as part of the transformer model.

Source: AI Stack Exchange

How many Parameters does GPT-4 have?

GPT-4 has 175 billion parameters, according to OpenAI.

How many Neurons does GPT-3 have?

GPT-4 has 1.76 trillion neurons. This makes it one of the largest and most powerful language models ever created. GPT-4 is able to perform a wide range of tasks, including generating text, translating languages, writing different kinds of creative content, and answering your questions in an informative way.

About the author

Daniel, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Guides.ai, is an accomplished leader with over 10 years in business development and a deep expertise in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Under his leadership, Guides.ai has become a key resource for comprehensive, user-friendly AI tutorials, catering to both beginners and professionals in the field.