As OpenAI seeks to expand its footprint past the consumer AI market, it’s exploring more niche fields, such as chip designing.
OpenAI is collaborating with sectors including chip design, life sciences and financial services, Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar stated at a Goldman Sachs technology event in San Francisco. The company will also explore pricing models based on business outcomes instead of AI usage.
Friar referenced OpenAI’s own efforts with its Jalapeno chip, which can be used in technical applications for AI. Within nine months, she said, the chip reached the “taped out” stage, at which point its design was finished and sent for production.
Meanwhile, OpenAI is aiming to go head-to-head with less expensive open-source and open-weight AI models. Friar said the company recently cut the price of its lesser-priced Luna model 80 percent. Since that time, that usage has increased by approximately 10 fold, she said.
Friar says there are currently 25 million users of OpenAI’s coding tool Codex. A 32 percent increase in revenue from business customers in June compared to July also supports that, she added, noting that annualized overall revenue grew 20 percent during the same period.
By mid-year, the company surpasses expectations to bring its business and consumer operations to a comparable scale, Friar said. She also pointed out that some of the open-source models in China are more expensive to operate than Luna via cloud.
Source: Reuters
