Why does OpenAI want to make its own chip?
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has made it his priority to purchase as many AI chips as possible. He recently complained publicly about the shortage of graphics processing units. Let us tell you that America’s Nvidia dominates the AI chips market, which supplies 80 percent of the suitable chips in the world market. In such a situation, OpenAI wants to acquire more and more AI chips. There are two reasons behind this, firstly, the lack of advanced processors to power OpenAI’s software and secondly, its efforts and the hardware required to power its products. Huge cost.
Running ChatGPT is not cheap
Since 2020, OpenAI has developed its generative AI technologies on a giant supercomputer built by Microsoft. This supercomputer uses 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) of Nvidia. Therefore running ChatGPT is very expensive for the company. The effort to develop its own AI chips would put OpenAI into a small group of big tech companies like Alphabet’s Google and Amazon.com. These companies have sought to take control over designing the chips that are fundamental to their businesses.
Own chip means huge investment
It is unclear whether OpenAI will move forward with plans to make custom chips. Industry experts say that doing this will be a big strategic initiative but it will involve huge investment, which could cost millions of dollars per year. The acquisition of a chip company could speed up the process of making OpenAI’s own chips. OpenAI’s plan to develop its own chip may take several years to complete.
