Tech giants are racing to throw their hats into the mix of new AI chatbots that will vie to compete with OpenAI’s highly-successful ChatGPT program, now the fastest application to ever reach 100 million monthly users. Following Microsoft’s multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI last month, and a potentially imminent expansion of its implementation in Microsoft’s products, Google and Baidu each announced the rollout of their own AI bots on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.
Google and Baidu’s primary concerns regarding Microsoft’s access to ChatGPT are likely related to how it could disrupt the traditional search engine, a key component of each company’s business. Speculation is swirling that Microsoft’s may be on the verge of integrating ChatGPT with its Bing search engine as soon as this afternoon, which will need to be countered by its competitors as soon as possible.
Related Stocks: Microsoft Corporation (MSFT), Alphabet Inc. (GOOG), Baidu, Inc. (BIDU)
In the last 24 hours, both Google and Baidu have announced the imminent launch of brand-new AI software, reaching out to grab onto a trend that they risked falling behind on if they did not begin to roll out offerings soon.
Interest in artificial intelligence (AI) applications has been booming since it was revealed that Microsoft was preparing a massive investment to secure their stake in consumer and enterprise-scale generative AI tech. As MRP noted in an Intelligence Briefing on the topic last month, generative AI is primarily used to produce unique images, text, and other mediums of communication from human prompts.
OpenAI, the organization behind the popular AI tools ChatGPT and DALL-E, may now be worth as much as $29 billion following a new round of fundraising from Microsoft and multiple other partners. That would be more than double the $14 billion valuation the company received from a 2021 tender offer. Though a conclusive dollar figure was not given, Crunchbase News notes that Microsoft signed off on a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment” in OpenAI at the end of January, which compounds the $1 billion in funding it has already received from Microsoft. Previous reports suggest Microsoft was in discussions to invest as much as $10 billion as part of the offer, alongside venture firms Thrive Capital and Founders Fund. More details regarding the investment are set to be announced on Tuesday afternoon.
Google countered Microsoft’s foray into third party AI tech by quietly investing around $300 million in startup Anthropic. Per Financial Times reporting, Google’s investment purchased a 10% stake in the company and established Google Cloud as Anthropic’s “preferred cloud provider”. AI models need…
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