ChatGPT cracks the 200 million user mark

ChatGPT triggered the artificial intelligence boom. Now the pioneering chatbot has doubled its number of users in less than a year.

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.

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, write software code and summarize information. The principle behind this is that they estimate 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 with a total valuation of around 100 billion dollars. Apple and the semiconductor group 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’s chips in turn 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.

dpa