OpenAI launches ChatGPT Enterprise, the company’s biggest announcement since ChatGPT debuted

OpenAI on Monday announced its biggest news since ChatGPT debuted: it is launching ChatGPT Enterprise, the business tier of the AI ​​chatbot, available starting Monday.

The tool has been in development for “less than a year” and has been endorsed by more than 20 companies of various sizes and industries, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap told CNBC. ChatGPT Enterprise includes access to GPT-4 with no usage restrictions, up to 2x faster performance than previous versions, and API credits. Lightcap said pricing would not be disclosed publicly and that “for us, it depends on the use cases and size of each company.” Beta users included Block, Canva, and The Estée Lauder Cos.

earlier this year, MicrosoftThe expanded investment in OpenAI — an additional $10 billion — made it the largest AI investment of the year, according to PitchBook, and in April the startup reportedly closed $300 million stock sale valued at between $27 billion and $29 billion, with investments from the likes of Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. Two months after ChatGPT launched in November, it surpassed 100 million monthly active users, breaking records for the fastest-growing consumer application in history: “Phenomenal adoption – we've honestly never seen anything like it, and the interest has been ever since.” grown.” “Brian Burke, research vice president at Gartner, told CNBC in May.

According to Lightcap and OpenAI, more than 80% of Fortune 500 companies had teams actively using ChatGPT.

A key difference between ChatGPT Enterprise and the consumer-facing version: ChatGPT Enterprise allows customers to enter company data to train and customize ChatGPT for their own industries and use cases, although some of these features are not yet available when it debuts on Monday. The company also plans to launch another tier of usage called ChatGPT Business for smaller teams, but hasn't given a timeline.

Lightcap told CNBC that rolling out the enterprise version first and waiting for the business tier “gives us a slightly better opportunity to engage hands-on with teams and understand what the deployment movement looks like before we open it fully.” .” it on.

OpenAI noted in a blog post that “we don't train on your business data or conversations, and our models don't learn from your usage,” adding that customers' conversation data is encrypted both in transit and at rest. However, the company logs aggregate data about how the tool is used, including performance metadata and more, which is relatively common, Lightcap said.

The debut of ChatGPT Enterprise comes at a time when the AI ​​arms race continues to heat up among leading chatbot providers such as OpenAI, Microsoft, Google and Anthropic. To encourage consumers to incorporate generative AI into their everyday lives, tech giants are scrambling to launch not just new chatbot apps, but new features as well. In May, OpenAI launched its iOS app, followed by the Android app in July. Google regularly rolls out updates to its Bard chatbot, and Microsoft is doing the same with Bing, introducing features like visual search. Anthropic, the AI ​​startup founded by former OpenAI executives, unveiled a new AI chatbot, Claude 2, in July, months after raising $750 million in two rounds of funding.

ChatGPT, like many major language models, is expensive to run, with each chat likely costing “single-digit cents,” according to OpenAI December tweet by CEO Sam Altman, who suggests it could cost millions of dollars to run the service for 100 million people a month.

The biggest obstacle to developing ChatGPT Enterprise was figuring out how to prioritize features, Lightcap told CNBC.

Of all the things that are coming out over the next few months, he said, “there was a prioritization of how to do those things based on how people are using the product — and what people really want and what it strengthens – should drive, the main theme.” I would say there is a debate within the team.”

A specific example is Code Interpreter, a ChatGPT Plus feature that has since been renamed Advanced Data Analysis. Lightcap said the team questioned whether the feature was a priority for ChatGPT Enterprise and that it “ranks high on a list with a bunch of other things that we think are at least as exciting,” but the feedback from the companies has led to preferring to offer it sooner rather than later.

OpenAI plans to onboard “as many companies as possible over the next few weeks,” according to the company's blog post.