ChatGPT firm CEO: 'No idea how we may one day generate revenue'

OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman

When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was asked during a chat if he is going to monetise ChatGPT, his answer was short and swift: "The honest answer is, we have no idea."

"We never made any revenue. We have no current plans to make any revenue. We have no idea how we may one day generate revenue."

Speaking about the expectation of investors, Altman said that they have made a "soft promise" to investors that ChatGPT itself would figure out a way to generate an investment return for them. After a brief pause and some laughter Sam Altman added, "You can laugh. It's all right. But, it is what I actually believe is going to happen."

Seems a very serious & real answer by @sama #ChatGPT pic.twitter.com/HujbNsL20m

— Vijay Shekhar Sharma (@vijayshekhar) January 26, 2023

ChatGPT or Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer is a chatbot that was launched by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research, and deployment company, in November 2022.

Meanwhile, Microsoft, which had in 2019 invested $1 billion in the company co-founded by Elon Musk, has announced that it would invest more in OpenAI, staking its future on the startup and tech behind the chatbot sensation ChatGPT, as well as setting the stage for more competition with its rival Alphabet Inc’s Google.

In a blog post, Microsoft said, "Today, we are announcing the third phase of our long-term partnership with OpenAI through a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment to accelerate AI breakthroughs to ensure these benefits are broadly shared with the world.”

A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment on the terms of the investment, which some media outlets earlier reported would be $10 billion, Reuters reported.

Read more: OpenAI experiments with paid pro ChatGPT version: All your questions answered