SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – They’re nothing if not ambitious! San Francisco-based OpenAI has gone from an experimental research lab to a general tech company challenging some of the Bay Area’s biggest incumbents.
OpenAI surged onto the consumer tech scene with the release of ChatGPT. The success of the wildly popular AI app took even some OpenAI staff members by surprise.
Today, ChatGPT has hundreds of millions of users worldwide. But OpenAI’s ambitions apparently extend far beyond that.
The company is reportedly pursuing multiple directions that challenge existing tech companies.
This week, OpenAI announced that it was about to release an AI-powered web browser. That would put it in direct competition with Google, which operates the world-leading Chrome browser.
OpenAI already competes with Google on search. Now, it’s getting into the browser game, which is often one of the more lucrative areas to be in.
Browsers collect tons of data on the websites that people visit. They also serve as operating systems for the modern Internet. Being positioned within that ecosystem gives a huge advantage, versus just being a web app.
OpenAI is also reportedly working to develop an AI-powered hardware product. This would likely be something similar to an iPhone, but built around its powerful AI technologies.
Again, that puts it directly in competition with other giant Bay Area tech companies. In this case, the startup appears to be taking on Apple, which has dominated the high-end hardware space for decades now, with its iPhones and other i-devices.
Competing with two massive tech giants at once—while still building out an incredibly powerful and incredibly expensive AI product—is wildly ambitious.
It’s not clear yet whether OpenAI will really have the funding and bandwidth to take on all these projects. It’s about time the San Francisco tech scene saw a bit more competition, though.
Game on, eh?
