ChatGPT creator OpenAI explores manufacturing AI chips at home: report

OpenAI, the company behind artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, is reportedly exploring the possibility of manufacturing chips in-house amid a global shortage of expensive and difficult-to-manufacture hardware.

An Oct. 5 Reuters report, citing people familiar with the matter, indicated that OpenAI has evaluated an unnamed company as a target to help with its AI chip manufacturing ambitions.

The company has not yet decided whether to proceed with the purchase. OpenAI has also been discussing several other options internally to address the current chip shortage.

In addition to building its own chips, the options include working closely with existing major chip supplier NVIDIA and diversifying chip suppliers beyond its current suppliers.

Earlier this year, OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman complained to a room full of AI developers that chip shortages were slowing his company's progress, according to a now-deleted blog post written by Raza Habib, CEO of AI company Humanloop.

Related: Meta is building an AI model to rival OpenAI's most powerful system.

“A common theme during the discussion was that OpenAI is currently extremely GPU limited and this is delaying many of their short-term plans,” Habib wrote.

If OpenAI goes ahead with its reported plans to manufacture its own chips, it will join a small group of tech industry heavyweights, including Google and Amazon, that have moved chip production in-house.

Demand for specialized AI chips has surged since ChatGPT was officially launched in November last year.

A wave of demand has sent NVIDIA stock prices soaring as companies looking to build AI applications clamor to buy the expensive computing hardware.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to Cointelgraph's request for comment.

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