The progress of Chinese tech companies across the entire stack is “remarkable,” OpenAI’s Sam Altman told CNBC.
Altman’s comments come as China races against the U.S. to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) — where AI matches human capabilities — and roll out the technology across society.
The pace of technological advance in “many fields,” including AI, is “amazingly fast,” Altman said. In some areas Chinese tech companies are near the frontier, while in others they lag behind, he added.
The country is moving to scale homegrown chipmakers that it hopes could eventually rival the likes of Nvidia, and AI companies are seeing big rallies on stock exchanges as investors double down on their potential.
Altman’s not the only tech leader paying attention to China.
American tech companies should “worry a little bit” about the subsidies their Chinese competitors receive from their government in the AI race, Microsoft President Brad Smith told CNBC on Wednesday.
Finding revenue
OpenAI has been moving to develop revenue streams as its looks to provide a path to profitability for investors that have ploughed around $70 billion into the company, according to deal-counting platform Dealroom. The company is looking to wrap up a $100 billion fundraising round, sources told CNBC.
Adverts within ChatGPT is one avenue the company is exploring.
“I think we still have some work to do to figure out the exact ad format that’s going to work best,” Altman said, adding that plans are in their early stages.
“The ads that I have personally liked the most in recent years from tech [companies] have been sort of Instagram style ads where you discover something new that you might really like and otherwise wouldn’t have known about,” he said. “I think we’ve got a real opportunity to push in that direction with ads in ChatGPT.”
OpenAI is initially planning to test adverts in the U.S., but will eventually roll out to other markets, Altman said.
While conversations around OpenAI’s timelines on a path to profitability are swirling among market watchers, the company is still focused on growth right now, Altman told CNBC.
“We are growing at an extremely fast rate right now,” he said. “I think as long as we can have reasonable unit economics, we should focus on continuing to grow faster and faster, and we’ll get profitable when we think we when we think it makes sense.”
