Analytics India Magazine has highlighted a consistent decrease in users on the ChatGPT website during the first half of this year.
Statistics from SimilarWeb, an analytics company, indicate a drop in users from 1.9 billion in May to 1.7 billion in June, further decreasing to 1.5 billion in July. These figures exclude users from APIs and the ChatGPT mobile app.
Some speculate that the decline in May might be attributed to students being out of school, while others suggest that users have begun creating their own bots instead of relying on the original ChatGPT.
A user on social media mentioned, “I can’t use ChatGPT at work anymore, but we’ve built our own model based on it.”
Another challenge stems from OpenAI’s financial losses after introducing ChatGPT. These losses reportedly doubled to approximately $540 million in the previous year, as reported by The Information in May.
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The operation costs of ChatGPT are also substantial, with an estimated daily expense of $700,000 (equivalent to Rs 5.80 crore).OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, acknowledged the hefty compute costs in a tweet, describing them as “eye-watering.”
A recent Investopedia report suggests that it might be premature for AI-leading companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, or Inflection to consider entering the initial public offering (IPO) market. The report claims that successful IPOs generally require at least a decade of operation and $100 million in revenue.
Furthermore, the pressure is mounting due to Elon Musk’s assertions of developing a competing chatbot.
Despite projecting an expected annual revenue of $200 million in 2023 and aiming for $1 billion in 2024, OpenAI is grappling with escalating losses. Its survival is substantially reliant on a $10 billion investment from Microsoft, its key backer.
