OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is exploring making its own artificial intelligence (AI)chips and has gone as far as evaluating a potential acquisition target, according to people familiar with the company’s plans.
The company has not yet decided to move ahead, according to recent internal discussions described to Reuters.
However, since at least lay year, it has discussed options to solve the shortage of expensive AI chips that OpenAI relies on, people said.
Photo: Reuters
These options have included building its own AI chip, working more closely with other chipmakers, including Nvidia, and also diversifying its suppliers beyond Nvidia.
OpenAI declined to comment. Its CEO, Sam Altman, has made the acquisition of more AI chips a top priority for the company. He has publicly complained about the scarcity of graphics processing units (GPU), a market dominated by Nvidia, which controls more than 80 percent of the global market for the chips best suited to run AI applications. The effort to obtain more chips is tied to two major concerns Altman has identified: a shortage of the advanced processors that power OpenAI’s software and the “eye-watering” costs associated with running the hardware necessary to power its efforts and products.
Since 2020, OpenAI has developed its generative AI technologies on a massive supercomputer constructed by Microsoft, one of OpenAI’s largest backers, that uses 10,000 Nvidia GPUs.
Running ChatGPT is very expensive for the company. Each query costs roughly US$0.04, according to an analysis from Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon.
If ChatGPT queries grow to one-10th the scale of Google’s search engine, it would require roughly US$48.1 billion in GPUs initially and about US$16 billion in chips per year to stay operational.
CUSTOM CHIPS ERA
An effort to develop its own AI chips would put OpenAI among a small group of large tech players such as Alphabet’s Google and Amazon.com that have sought to take control over designing the chips that are fundamental to their businesses.
It is unclear whether OpenAI would move ahead with a plan to build a custom chip. Doing so would be a major strategic initiative and a heavy investment that could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars a year in costs, according to industry veterans. Even if OpenAI committed resources to the task, it would not guarantee success. An acquisition of a chip company could speed up the process of building OpenAI’s own chip — as it did for Amazon.com and its acquisition of Annapurna Labs in 2015.
OpenAI had considered the path to the point where it performed its due diligence on a potential acquisition target, according to one of the people familiar with its plans.
The identity of the company OpenAI looked at purchasing could not be learned.
Even if OpenAI goes ahead with plans for a custom chip — including an acquisition — the effort is likely to take several years, leaving the company dependent on commercial providers like Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices in the meantime. Some big tech companies have been building their own processors for years with limited results. Meta’s custom chip effort has been besotted with issues, leading the company to scrap some of its AI chips, according to a Reuters report. The Facebook owner is now working on a newer chip that would span all types of AI work.
OpenAI’s main backer, Microsoft, is also developing a custom AI chip that OpenAI is testing, The Information has reported. The plans could signal further distancing between the two companies.
SEMICONDUCTORS: The German laser and plasma generator company will expand its local services as its specialized offerings support Taiwan’s semiconductor industries Trumpf SE + Co KG, a global leader in supplying laser technology and plasma generators used in chip production, is expanding its investments in Taiwan in an effort to deeply integrate into the global semiconductor supply chain in the pursuit of growth. The company, headquartered in Ditzingen, Germany, has invested significantly in a newly inaugurated regional technical center for plasma generators in Taoyuan, its latest expansion in Taiwan after being engaged in various industries for more than 25 years. The center, the first of its kind Trumpf built outside Germany, aims to serve customers from Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia and South Korea,
Gasoline and diesel prices at domestic fuel stations are to fall NT$0.2 per liter this week, down for a second consecutive week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to drop to NT$26.4, NT$27.9 and NT$29.9 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to fall to NT$24.8 per liter at CPC stations and NT$24.6 at Formosa pumps, they said. The price adjustments came even as international crude oil prices rose last week, as traders
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which supplies advanced chips to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday reported NT$1.046 trillion (US$33.1 billion) in revenue for last quarter, driven by constantly strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, falling in the upper end of its forecast. Based on TSMC’s financial guidance, revenue would expand about 22 percent sequentially to the range from US$32.2 billion to US$33.4 billion during the final quarter of 2024, it told investors in October last year. Last year in total, revenue jumped 31.61 percent to NT$3.81 trillion, compared with NT$2.89 trillion generated in the year before, according to
PRECEDENTED TIMES: In news that surely does not shock, AI and tech exports drove a banner for exports last year as Taiwan’s economic growth experienced a flood tide Taiwan’s exports delivered a blockbuster finish to last year with last month’s shipments rising at the second-highest pace on record as demand for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware and advanced computing remained strong, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. Exports surged 43.4 percent from a year earlier to US$62.48 billion last month, extending growth to 26 consecutive months. Imports climbed 14.9 percent to US$43.04 billion, the second-highest monthly level historically, resulting in a trade surplus of US$19.43 billion — more than double that of the year before. Department of Statistics Director-General Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜) described the performance as “surprisingly outstanding,” forecasting export growth
RSS