50+ Open AI Statistics

OpenAI is definitely a company to look out for in the information age.

Despite its tumultuous history of founders leaving the company, it has made significant progress on its AI models.

Let’s look at some OpenAI statistics to gain a better picture of what this company is about.

OpenAI Overview

There have been a lot of famous names in the creation of OpenAI, such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.

Let’s look into how OpenAI was founded and what some of its early investors are saying right now.

OpenAI Was Founded in 2015

The initial founders included notable names such as Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Wojciech Zaremba, Ilya Sutskever, and John Schulman.

Investors like Peter Thiel and enterprises such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Infosys, and YC Research also have helped build OpenAI with their funding. (Britannica, 2024)

In March 2023, Musk Signed an Open Letter That Called for a Six-Month Pause on AI Development

An excerpt from the letter stated that “from the dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable black-box models with emergent capabilities.” (Business Insider, 2023)

Elon has since said that he thinks AI might take most jobs in the future. The open letter is still live, and you can add your signature to it here: Future of Life.

OpenAI Employs Around 1700 People as of September 2024

OpenAI also has a messy history with quite a few founders like Ilya Sutskever, Jan Leike, and recently Mira Murati leaving. (Pitchbook, 2024)

Let’s look at some stats directly from OpenAI:

OpenAI Is Currently Headquartered in San Francisco

Also known as the Bay Area or Silicon Valley, it is known to be the center for technological innovations in the world.

What Is OpenAI’s Mission?

OpenAI’s mission is to create AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence, in a way that benefits all of humanity.

The company’s current CEO is Sam Altman, who reprised his role in November of 2023.

Audience Engagement and Demographics

According to a report by YouGov, here are some of the metrics on audience engagement and ChatGPT’s social media traffic.

Nearly Half of Americans Familiar with ChatGPT

54% of Americans haven’t heard of ChatGPT at all.

Two-Thirds of Postgraduates Know About ChatGPT

Only 6% of Americans say that they have personally used the program.

Let’s look at some demographics of ChatGPT users derived from Similar Web:

55.56% of ChatGPT Users Are Male

The other 44.44% comprise of females.

31.74% of ChatGPT Users Are Aged 25-34

Here are the stats according to age group:

• 18-24 years: 25.28%
• 25-34 years: 31.74%
• 35-44 years: 18.78%
• 45-54 years: 12.20%
• 55-64 years: 7.32%
• 65+ years: 4.69%

OpenAI Employee Statistics

Let’s look at some statistics on the employees of OpenAI.

OpenAI Hires an Army of Contractors to Make Basic Coding Automatable

Open AI hired 1,000 remote contractors from places like Latin America and Eastern Europe, 60% of whom were used on tasks like data labeling. (Semator, 2023)

OpenAI Software Engineers Average $121K, Lower Than Some May Expect

According to Glassdoor, OpenAI’s employees don’t really have exorbitant salaries, with senior software engineers averaging $145K and researchers $75K.

According to Indeed, the average salary in the U.S. for a software engineer is $105,152.

Taking an opinion from a reddit post, which said the OpenAI board received $0 salary in the past few years, but the comments mentioned they profit from equity.

Website Traffic and User Engagement

OpenAI’s ChatGPT remains one of the most popular chatbots in the arena of AI language models.

What are the metrics for its user engagement?

Here are some more traffic insights from Similar Web:

OpenAI’s Website Received 551.1 Million Views in September 2024

This was a 22.96% increase from the previous month.

Device Distribution for OpenAI’s Website in 2024: 59.98% Desktop, 40.02% Mobile Web

The device distribution is measured by how much incoming traffic comes from which device.

The Average Visit Duration on OpenAI’s Website Is 1 Minute and 46 Seconds

The number of pages per visit is 2.18, and the bounce rate is surprisingly high at 57.47%.

There Was a Steep Decline in OpenAI Website Visits After September 23, 2024

The visitor count dropped from 120 million to 40 million in the week around 23rd September.

At Its Peak in April 2024, the Site Was Receiving Nearly 2 Billion Visits Each Month

This puts it in the category of the top 20 most visited websites in the world for that month, but now its visitorship has dropped to less than 10% of the original.

Top Organic Search Terms for OpenAI in 2024: “ChatGPT” Leads With 38.41%

The term ‘chat gpt’ comes second with 27.13%.

1.5M Users+ Are Creating Over 2M Images a Day With DALL·E

Over 100k users are sharing their creations on the Discord community. (OpenAI, 2024)

Open AI’s Financial Performance

While OpenAI has a very high valuation, it has suffered from losses in the past, with costs to maintain ChatGPT exceeding expectations.

Let’s break it down here by going into more OpenAI revenue statistics, growth rate, and cost of its AI systems.

OpenAI Reached an $86 Billion Valuation

It also has an annual recurring revenue of $400 Million as of September 2024. (Sacra, 2024)

OpenAI Achieved 248% Growth in 2024

This is year-on-year growth from 2023. (Sacra, 2024)

Estimates From CNBC Indicate That OpenAI’s GPT-3 Could Cost More Than $4 Million

The cost of a single Nvidia chip is around $10,000, and they make most of the GPUs for the AI industry. (CNBC, 2023)

OpenAI on Track to Generate More Than $1 Billion in Annual Revenue in 2024

The company is earning around $80 million a month.

Unfortunately for the year 2022, they only managed to amass $28 million in revenue and incurred a $540 million loss. (Fortune, 2023)

The overall market for generative AI seems to be in good shape though.

It’s expected to grow at a significant CAGR of 34.2%.

The Global Generative AI Market Is Expected to Grow at a CAGR of 34.2%

There are several reasons behind this high expected growth rate, such as increased data availability and progress in artificial intelligence research. (Market.us, 2024)

Key Milestones in OpenAI’s Journey

What are some of the milestones OpenAI has gone through while developing an AI tools such as ChatGPT?

Let’s look at some key moments throughout its journey that helped mold it into a leading force.

According to Sam Altman Two Million Developers Are Now Working with OpenAI’s Tools

Sam Altman announced on this OpenAI’s Dev Day in 2023.

He also noted that more than 100 million people were using OpenAI tools weekly. (YouTube, 2023)

ChatGPT Reached Its First 1 Million Users 5 Days Within Its Launch

According to a tweet by Sam Altman on Twitter, in terms of users, ChatGPT managed to reach 1 million in 5 days. The tweet also got a lot of engagement with over 1k bookmarks.

There Are Around 10 Million Paid ChatGPT Subscribers

A single ChatGPT subscription is around $20 monthly. (The New York Times, 2024)

OpenAI’s New O1 Model Solves 83% of IMO Problems

The new model has two modes- o1-preview and o1-mini, released in September 2024.

The previous model, GPT-4o, solved only 13.4% of them. (OpenAI, 2024)

Early Investors Are Making 100x Their Investment

OpenAI has also partnered with Apple Intelligence, which could lead to gains in AI research for both companies. (Sacra, 2024)

What’s Next for OpenAI?

97% of Business Owners Believe ChatGPT Will Help Their Business

Here are a few more stats from the Forbes Advisor report:

• 33% use ChatGPT to write website content

• 44% plan to use ChatGPT to write content in other languages

Current and Former Employees at OpenAI and Google DeepMind Sign Open Letter Warning About AI Risks

The signatories of the open later that AI companies have a “financial incentive” to avoid effective AI oversight.

They also claim AI companies have a “weak obligation” to share capabilities, limitations, risks, and the adequacy of protective measures. (HR Grapevine, 2024)

OpenAI Likely to Become a For-Profit Company

This is after a few senior figures, such as Mira Murati, left the company. (The Guardian, 2024)

Final Thoughts

What’s next for OpenAI in their pursuit of ethical AI development while creating brand new AI technologies?

According to The Verge, OpenAI could launch its new AI tool – Orion AI, which is said to be much more powerful than the current AI language model, in December.

The release won’t be initially for ChatGPT users though, OpenAI plans to release the model to its partner companies first.