Innovation & Wealth › Platforms, mobile & AI › The AI boom: from deep learning to ChatGPT
OpenAI and ChatGPT
founded December 2015; ChatGPT November 30, 2022· Company or fortune· Companies & fortunes
Well documentedSolid records, texts or physical evidence.
A San Francisco lab founded as a nonprofit in 2015 that built ChatGPT, the chatbot that brought AI into everyday use.
See it on the Innovation & Wealth map →What happened
Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman and others founded it in December 2015 to build AI 'for the benefit of humanity.' Needing billions for computing, it added a capped-profit arm in 2019 and took about $13 billion from Microsoft. ChatGPT launched November 30, 2022; by late 2025 it had about 800 million weekly users. It earns from subscriptions, business licenses and model access, but spends far more on computing. In 2025 its for-profit arm became a nonprofit-controlled public-benefit corporation valued near $500 billion.
Impact on society and the economy
It turned AI from a research topic into a mass product, set off a race among tech giants and redrew the industry's leaders.
How we know
OpenAI's charter and announcements, Microsoft's filings, court records from suits by Musk and publishers, and detailed reporting on its 2023 board crisis.
Still debated
Its governance is contested: the board fired Altman in November 2023, then rehired him within days, and critics question how much control the nonprofit still has.
Connections (3)
▸Elon Musk: Tesla and SpaceX co-founded and later sued OpenAI and ChatGPTWell documented
The connection
Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit counterweight to Google. He left its board in 2018; OpenAI says he had sought control or a merger with Tesla. In 2024 he sued, saying it betrayed its nonprofit mission by turning to profit with Microsoft. He founded rival xAI (2023) and led a rejected $97.4 billion bid for OpenAI (2025).
When and how
San Francisco, 2015–2018; lawsuit filed in state court in 2024, then refiled in federal court in Oakland, California.
How we know
Founding announcements, emails released by both sides in court, and the lawsuit filings.
Debates
Whether OpenAI broke a binding founding promise or Musk mainly wanted control; the released emails support parts of both accounts.
▸OpenAI and ChatGPT made mainstream The AI boom: from deep learning to ChatGPTWell documented
The connection
ChatGPT, released free on November 30, 2022, let anyone talk with a large language model in plain English. It reached an estimated 100 million users in two months, then the fastest growth of any consumer app. Its success sent Microsoft, Google, Meta and others racing to build rivals, and set off the surge of spending on chips and data centers.
When and how
San Francisco, November 2022; Microsoft invested about $10 billion more in January 2023 and built the technology into Bing and Office.
How we know
User estimates from analysts such as UBS and OpenAI's own figures; tech companies' earnings calls cite ChatGPT as the turning point.
Debates
Whether OpenAI can keep its lead as rivals catch up, and whether its business can ever cover its enormous computing costs.
▸OpenAI and ChatGPT is heavily backed by Bill Gates and MicrosoftWell documented
The connection
Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 and about $13 billion in total by 2023, supplying the Azure cloud computing that trained ChatGPT and gaining rights to use OpenAI's models in its products. Gates, no longer on Microsoft's board, advised on the partnership and called GPT-4 the most important technology advance since the graphical interface.
When and how
Redmond and San Francisco; deals in 2019, 2021 and January 2023 under CEO Satya Nadella; after OpenAI's 2025 restructuring Microsoft held roughly 27% of its for-profit arm.
How we know
Microsoft's filings and announcements document the investments; both firms announced the 2025 restructuring terms. Gates's view is in his 2023 essay 'The Age of AI Has Begun.'
Debates
The partnership has been tense: OpenAI added other cloud providers, and the two compete for customers. How much of OpenAI's value Microsoft ultimately captures is uncertain.