ChatGPT is sparking the AI ​​”gold rush” in Silicon Valley

ChatGPT, Silicon Valley’s latest implementation, has investors scrambling to find the next big thing in generative AI, technology that some see as the start of a new era in big tech.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been increasingly present in everyday life for decades, but the November launch of a chatbot from startup OpenAI marked a turning point in its perception by the general public and investors.

“Often we have platforms that come along and lead to an explosion of new companies. We’ve seen that with the internet and mobile, and AI could be the next platform.” said Shernaz Daver of California-based Khosla Ventures.Also read: How does Noam Chomsky view ChatGPT? “High-tech plagiarism,” says the American thinker.

Generative AI, of which ChatGPT is an example, wades through oceans of data to conjure up original content—a photo, a poem, a thousand-word article—in seconds and on a simple request.

Since its separate release in late November, ChatGPT has become one of the fastest growing applications ever and prompted Microsoft and Google to speed up projects that until now have been kept under tight guard over concerns that the technology was not yet ready for the public.

“Just five days after it was launched, one million people were using ChatGPT — about 60 times faster than using Facebook to reach one million users,” said Wayne Ho, partner at SignalFire, another venture capital firm.Also read: Bill Gates believes that ChatGPT will change the world. Here’s why

“Suddenly investors are all talking about how ChatGPT will eliminate millions of knowledge worker jobs, disrupt trillion dollar industries, and fundamentally change the way we learn, consume and make decisions,” he said.

The explosion of generative AI comes at a bleak time for the technology sector, with tens of thousands of layoffs by the world’s largest companies as well as smaller companies struggling to survive.

“While other categories are facing valuation deflation and capital appreciation, generative AI companies are not,” Daffer said.

Hu Jintao said that the market valuations of generative AI companies were very high, while everything else was contracted out.

“hard to keep up”

He said OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, values ​​Microsoft at about $30 billion although it is still burning cash at a high speed.

Generative AI entrepreneurs say they no longer need to shout for attention when looking for money or details of what they are trying to offer.

“It helped a lot,” said Sarah Nagy, founder of Seek AI, a startup that allows non-professionals to extract technical data from a database using queries in everyday language.

“Before ChatGPT… I had to explain what generative AI is and why it is important,” she added.

Now the appetite for ChatGPT-like capabilities seems boundless, and not just by investors.

“The demand from customers has increased a lot,” Naji said. “It’s hard to keep up, because we’re still a small company.”

The female entrepreneur wants to grow her team, and according to Dever, while the trend is downsizing, “we’re currently hiring” for generative AI.

In the past few weeks, the giants that have been in the news have mainly been, first of all, Microsoft, OpenAI’s partner and investor, followed by Google, which is trying to keep up.

But under it, a host of startups also have ideas on offer.Also read: What is the Indian link for Mira Moratti, CTO of ChatGPT creator OpenAI?

Other recent examples of funding rounds include California-based Kognitos, which aims to automate administrative tasks, and a platform for Poly designers that can output 3D graphics or maps in seconds.

In addition to the usual venture capitalists, tech giants are also on the lookout, like Google, which just invested $300 million to acquire a 10 percent stake in new startup Anthropic and its chatbot Claude.

Hu said the ChatGPT “gold rush” could be unprecedented and could expand beyond generative AI because the technology itself reduces the need for a computer programmer or designer to implement ideas.

“Now you no longer need a Stanford Ph.D. in computer science: any developer can build something amazing on top of ChatGPT and other foundation models in one weekend.”

“This wave of AI can be larger than mobile devices or the cloud, and more than the size of something like the industrial revolution that changed the course of human history,” Hu said.