One of the most well-funded AI businesses in the industry, OpenAI, is looking into producing its own AI chips. According to a report, the corporation has been debating AI chip options as the scarcity of chips for training AI models intensifies since at least last year.
OpenAI is examining a number of options to further its chip aspirations, including buying an AI chip maker or starting an internal chip design project. According to a report, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has prioritized the company’s purchase of more AI chips.
Currently, OpenAI, like the majority of its rivals, develops models like ChatGPT, GPT-4, and DALL-E 3 using GPU-based technology. The most advanced AI of today can be trained using GPUs. Because of its propensity for doing numerous computations in parallel.
The GPU supply chain has been severely pressured by the generative AI boom, which has been lucrative for GPU manufacturers like Nvidia. Microsoft cautioned in a summer earnings report that there is a serious scarcity of the server hardware required to run AI that it could cause service interruptions. Additionally, until 2024, Nvidia’s top-performing AI chips are said to be out of stock.
Additionally, GPUs are necessary for running and providing OpenAI’s models. The company runs customer workloads on clusters of GPUs in the cloud. However, they are extremely expensive.
According to a study by Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon, ChatGPT would need to buy around $48.1 billion in GPUs at first. And then buy about $16 billion in chips annually to remain operating. If the volume of its searches reached a tenth that of Google Search.It wouldn’t be OpenAI’s first attempt to develop its own AI processors.
To train massive generative AI systems like PaLM-2 and Imagen, Google uses a processor called the TPU (short for “tensor processing unit”). Customers of AWS can use Amazon’s own chips for both training (Trainium) and inferencing (Inferentia).
According to reports, Microsoft is cooperating with AMD to create the Athena internal AI processor, which OpenAI is supposedly evaluating.
OpenAI is undoubtedly well-positioned to make significant R&D investments. The business, which has received over $11 billion in venture financing. It is getting close to reaching a $1 billion annual sales threshold. Furthermore, it’s thinking about a share sale that might boost its secondary-market valuation to $90 billion.
A contract with Microsoft reportedly caused the AI chipmaker Graphcore’s worth to drop by $1 billion. In addition the company announced job losses last year in response to the “extremely challenging” macroeconomic situation.
In the meantime, 10% of the employees at Intel-owned AI chip maker Habana Labs were let go. Additionally, Meta’s efforts to develop a proprietary AI chip have been plagued by problems. This forced the business to abandon part of its test hardware.
Visit CxO Global FORUM or CxO News Live for all the latest updates.
