You have heard a lot of buzzes about ChatGPT like what is ChatGPT, How to use it, What it can do, and how it could be helpful in the future. Apart from this, many people are wondering who owns ChatGPT, how is it linked with Elon Musk and Microsoft, who created ChatGPT, What is OpenAI and how’s it related to ChatGPT.
Don’t worry, in this article, I’ll answer all these questions with explanations.
At first, OpenAI launched only the web version of ChatGPT, but later iOS & Android Apps were made available in respective app stores.
When Microsoft made an announcement (which I’ve discussed in this article), people started to think ChatGPT was owned by Microsoft.
So with all these speculations, I decided to clear all clouds and put the whole story in front of the readers of my website.
Who Owns ChatGPT?
So, let’s go ahead and let me answer all the important questions.
ChatGPT is an Artificial Intelligence Chatbot that has answers to every single question.
Be it related to your travel plans, creating a business plan that you are going to start, or even related to a programming language, ChatGPT answers each of these questions in minutes.
Are you wondering who owns ChatGPT? who is behind this powerful AI chatbot?
Here is the answer!
ChatGPT is owned by OpenAI.
OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research firm that started as a nonprofit organization in December 2015.
Its headquarters is located in San Francisco and has several interesting products such as DALL-E, ChatGPT-4, OpenAI Five, and OpenAI Codex.
When ChatGPT Was Born?
The ChatGPT (ChatGPT 3.5) was announced in November 2022 as I discussed above but its roots are linked back to 2018 when the first generative model; GPT-1 was announced in June 2018 by OpenAI.
Then, nobody knew that it would become so popular.
The company announced the second version, GPT-2 in February 2019 with more features upgradation.
The third GPT-3 was released in June 2020 and uses deep learning to generate human-like responses.
Since then, the company has become busy with further improvement, and after the completion of training in November 2022, the Company announced a powerful AI Chatbot that they called “ChatGPT”; which was actually GPT 3.5, and that has attracted huge attention from all over the world.
Who Created ChatGPT?
So now you know who owns ChatGPT!
but who created it?
The ChatGPT was developed by OpenAI; a non-profit organization started in 2015. It was supported by a group of well-known people (more on this later).
The ChatGPT was announced to the public in November 2022 after its training was completed.
So the cut-off date for all the answers that ChatGPT generates is up to November 2022.
For any event that happened after November 2022, the ChatGPT will have no idea.
Though, the latest ChatGPT-4 can answer questions related to recent events.
The co-founders of OpenAI were Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Greg Brockman, Jessica Livingston, Ilya Sutskever, and Reid Hoffman.
With Elon Musk’s resignation from the company in 2018, it is operated by the remaining co-founders.
The company still operates as a non-profit organization with its subsidiary for-profit OpenAI Limited Partnership under the bigger umbrella establishment.
Who Owns OpenAI?
As per Metro UK, Open AI is not owned by a single person, Apart from the founders that I’ve spoke of above, the other investors such as Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, Y Combinator, Politician Will Hurd, Capitalist Shivon Zilis, Microsoft, Khosia venture, etc. together owns OpenAI.
is ChatGPT Owned by Elon Musk?
No, ChatGPT is not owned by Elon Musk.
It was started by a non-profit organization OpenAI which was founded by Elon Musk together with other people such as Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, etc.
Following the creation of OpenAI in 2015, Elon Musk departed from the company in June 2018 to concentrate more on his own company Tesla & others while the remaining founders continued.
is OpenAI owned by Microsoft?
No, neither ChatGPT nor OpenAI is owned by Microsoft.
Microsoft had great interest in the company and they invested $1 billion in 2019 and more in the year 2021.
In Jan 2023, Microsoft announced an investment of $10 billion in the company with an agreement to continue to be a cloud provider for OpenAI services and that Microsoft will incorporate ChatGPT in its products such as BingAI, one of the ChatGPT alternatives.
OpenAI is a separate Identity which is an umbrella organization of ChatGPT not being controlled by Microsoft.
So saying OpenAI is owned by Microsoft is totally misleading.
Is ChatGPT created by Elon Musk?
No, ChatGPT was created by a non-profit organization called OpenAI which was started by a group of people Elon Musk was one only of the founders of.
The other founders were people like Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, etc.
This news came into the limelight when OpenAI launched ChatGPT which became massively popular in just five days after its launch.
Why did Elon Musk leave the Company?
There is no confirmation as to why Elon Musk left the company in 2018.
However, it is heard that Elon resigned from the company to concentrate more on their own companies like Tesla and others.
There were rumors that Elon Musk had a conflict of interest as well.
Bottom Line
ChatGPT is a powerful AI-powered chatbot that quickly answers your questions. It is one of the products of OpenAI; ChatGPT’s parent company & an artificial research firm that was started in 2015 by a group of people such as Elon Musk, Sam Altman, etc.
Elon Musk departed from the company in June 2018.
OpenAI was started as a non-profit organization and is currently owned by founders and investors.
In 2023, Microsoft announced an investment of $10 billion in the company with a promise to integrate ChatGPT in its flagship search engine; Bing, and rename it as BingAI.
So ChatGPT is neither owned by Elon Musk nor Microsoft. ChatGPT is owned by OpenAI.