OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met with hundreds of Fortune 500 company executives in San Francisco, New York, and London this month to pitch AI services for corporate use, directly competing in some cases with Microsoft, their financial backer, according to attendees who spoke to Reuters.
The OpenAI Roadshow
The roadshow-style events demonstrate how the company, credited with catalyzing the growth of generative artificial intelligence through its consumer offering, seeks to expand revenue streams from corporations worldwide, potentially encroaching on the home territory of its largest partner.
Altman Pitching ChatGPT Enterprise
Altman personally addressed over 100 executives in each city during the events, as reported by attendees who requested anonymity. At each event, Altman and Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap provided product demonstrations, showcasing offerings such as ChatGPT Enterprise, the enterprise-grade version of their renowned chatbot that generates text from basic prompts, software for connecting customer applications to their AI services via APIs, and their new text-to-video models.
OpenAI has assured that data from ChatGPT Enterprise customers will not be utilized to train its models. Engaging potential customers from various sectors like finance, healthcare, and energy, OpenAI executives emphasized multiple applications, such as call center management and translation. They pointed out that over 92% of Fortune 500 companies already utilize the consumer version of their chatbot.
Microsoft, OpenAI's largest investor, provides access to OpenAI's technology via its Azure cloud platform and offers Microsoft 365 Copilot, a productivity tool for enterprises powered by OpenAI's models.
Microsoft Customers' Questions
Attendees reported that Some executives at the events questioned why they should invest in ChatGPT Enterprise if they are already Microsoft customers. Altman and Lightcap countered that subscribing to the enterprise service enabled direct collaboration with the OpenAI team, access to the latest models, and more significant opportunities for customized AI products, as recounted by attendees. OpenAI and Microsoft declined to comment further.
OpenAI Expanding AI Offerings
OpenAI, valued at $86 billion in a recent secondary sale, has been striving to diversify its revenue streams since the rapid rise in popularity of its chatbot ChatGPT in late 2022. Sources indicate it is progressing towards its projected $1 billion revenue target for 2024.
While expanding its offerings with new consumer products like the marketplace ChatGPT stores, OpenAI anticipates that selling to enterprises will become a more significant revenue stream. Lightcap informed Bloomberg last week that over 600,000 people have signed up to use ChatGPT Enterprise and Team, a notable increase from around 150,000 in January.
Lightcap, the primary OpenAI executive dedicated to enterprise adoption, has additionally engaged with Hollywood studio executives to endorse the company's Sora video creation tool. This tool generates and refines videos based on a user's text description, sparking enthusiasm and concern within the creative industry.
Two prominent Hollywood studios informed Reuters that they are pursuing early access to begin exploring Sora's applications, although they harbor concerns regarding the source of the video used to train Sora, the reliability of the output, and its capability to safeguard copyrighted works.
Fox and News Corp hosted Altman at a leadership retreat last October, during which he participated in a question-and-answer session, as per a source familiar with the session.
