Frustrated with chip shortages, the company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI, is considering entering the chip manufacturing market itself, with various options including the acquisition of another chip manufacturing company on the table, per a report in Reuters.
The AI industry has come to rely on a singular product, Nvidia’s H100 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) a semiconductor chip that now powers all leading large language models (LLMs), like ChatGPT.
OpenAI logo seen on screen with ChatGPT website displayed on mobile seen in this illustration in Brussels, Belgium, on December 12, 2022. (Photo by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Shortages of the chips, driven by an arms race to acquire them led by big tech companies, has led OpenAI to consider new methods.
Via Reuters:
The company has not yet decided to move ahead, according to recent internal discussions described to Reuters. However, since at least last year it discussed various options to solve the shortage of expensive AI chips that OpenAI relies on, according to people familiar with the matter.
The effort to get more chips is tied to two major concerns Altman has identified: a shortage of the advanced processors that power OpenAI’s software and the “eye-watering” costs associated with running the hardware necessary to power its efforts and products.
Since 2020, OpenAI has developed its generative artificial intelligence technologies on a massive supercomputer constructed by Microsoft, one of its largest backers, that uses 10,000 of Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs).
The chip shortage has placed an economic constraint on the AI industry’s growth. With the current costs of chips, each ChatGPT query costs the company 4 cents — a significant cost, considering the LLM received 10 million queries in its launch week alone.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election. Follow him on Twitter @AllumBokhari.