2024 was a year of record-breaking highs and hard lows for OpenAI. Top executives resigned, Sam Altman was ousted and returned, more quality competition, the tragic death of a former employee turned whistleblower, and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg teamed up to battle OpenAI.
In November 2024, Suchir Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco home, just eight days after his name was listed in a lawsuit against OpenAI. Balaji publicly voiced concerns alleging that OpenAI was engaging in unethical behavior by utilizing protected content without authorization and potentially violating copyright laws.
In 2024, ChatGPT became the fastest-growing platform in history with over 1 million users in 5 days, now over 300 million weekly users. ChatGPT costs $700,000 per day and OpenAI invested close to $7 billion on training chat GPT and another $1.5 billion on staffing.
That means that despite generating $3.7 billion in revenue, the company expects to lose $5 billion in 2024. Some analysts predict that OpenAI annual losses could hit $14 billion per year by 2026. And yet, OpenAI recently raised the largest round of Venture Capital funding in history with $6.6 billion.
