ChatGPT was launched on November 30, 2022, by San Francisco–based OpenAI, the creator of DALL. E 2 and Whisper AI. The service was launched as initially free to the public, with plans to monetize the service later. By December 4, 2022, ChatGPT already had over one million users.
ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI, a private AI research laboratory based in San Francisco, California. OpenAI was co-founded by a group of high-profile tech executives, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and others, in 2015. However, Elon Musk stepped down from the board in 2018 and the other co-founders have also moved on to other projects.
Today, OpenAI is governed by a board of directors and is backed by a number of high-profile investors, including Microsoft, Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, and others. While OpenAI is a private company, its research and development efforts are aimed at advancing AI in a way that benefits humanity as a whole.