- Sam Altman said OpenAI would “never rule out” building its own AI chips.
- The company is dealing with a global shortage in microprocessors vital for training AI.
- Reuters reported that OpenAI was considering developing its own chips in a break from Microsoft.
Sam Altman has said that OpenAI will “never rule out” building its own AI chips as it grapples with a global shortage of vital processors.
Speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live event, Altman said that although OpenAI is not currently developing its own chips, achieving its ultimate ambition of creating general artificial intelligence might require it to do so in the future.
“We are trying to figure out what it is going to take to scale, to deliver what we think the world is going to demand and the model scale that we think the research can support,” Altman said.
“That might not require any custom hardware, and we have wonderful partnerships right now with people who are doing amazing work — so the default path would certainly be not to, but I’d never rule it out.”
Reuters reported earlier this month that OpenAI was exploring making its own chips to power ChatGPT.
The company has been relying on its partner Microsoft for the vast amounts of computing power required to run its AI models, with the tech giant in 2020 building OpenAI a huge supercomputer that uses 10,000 advanced Nvidia GPUs.
If OpenAI was to develop its own chips, it would mark a break between the two companies, which have worked closely together since Microsoft agreed to invest $10 billion in OpenAI earlier this year.
Advanced processors such as Nvidia’s H100 “Hopper” GPU are crucial for training and running large language models such as OpenAI’s GPT-4, with the AI boom sparking a global shortage as companies and countries scramble to secure a supply of the precious microchips.
Nvidia controls over 80% of the global AI chip market, but Altman said that rising demand might soon produce competitors who could help alleviate the shortage and drive prices down.
“Nvidia certainly has something amazing,” he said. “But I think the magic of capitalism is doing its thing and a lot of other people are trying, and we’ll see where it all shakes out.”
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider, made outside normal working hours.
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