Can You Invest in OpenAI's ChatGPT?

Artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) have been at the forefront of technological development over the last few years. ChatGPT, which is owned and managed by OpenAI, has become the name most synonymous with the AI space, so naturally investors want to know if they can invest in the LLM tool. However, OpenAI is not a public company, meaning you cannot purchase shares of it in the open market. There are other ways to invest in AI technologies and even ChatGPT indirectly, though.

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Why Invest In AI?

Depending on who you are, AI is about to change everything all at once or nothing at all. Since the release of art-bot AIs like DALL-E and chatbot AIs like ChatGPT, some observers have rushed to dub this the dawn of a new age. Occasional enthusiasts have literally compared the invention of AI to the industrial revolution.

On the other end of the spectrum, skeptics have dismissed the current generation of artificial intelligence as little more than a digital party trick. These writers have rushed to point out every mistake made by the still early-in-life models as proof that the underlying technology is irredeemably flawed.

Where this will all land in five or ten years time is hard to say. Normalcy bias is a powerful thing, so the “nothing to see here camp” might be based on little more than the assumption that since a digital mind didn’t exist yesterday, it cannot exist tomorrow. On the other hand, while ChatGPT does the same thing that computers have always done best by finding patterns in data, it’s doing so on a scale and at a speed that hasn’t been seen before.

How Can You Invest In ChatGPT?

In the typical manner, you cannot invest in ChatGPT. That’s because it’s a software package produced and owned by OpenAI, a private company based in San Francisco. Because it’s private, that means its stocks won’t appear on the traditional stock market like other top companies on the market.

If you’re an accredited investor, it’s theoretically possible that you could buy a stake in OpenAI by purchasing privately held shares. But OpenAI’s investor list includes some of Silicon Valley’s most influential billionaires, so it might take an eight-figure check to even get someone returning your calls. If that’s your profile though, you are most likely better off investing through one of the venture capital firms that own a stake in OpenAI, including Sequoia Capital or Thrive Capital.

For retail investors, generally the closest you can get to investing in ChatGPT is by purchasing shares of Microsoft (MSFT) stock. The company has invested billions of dollars into the company, giving it a significant profit stake in OpenAI. That also includes access to OpenAI’s software as the basis of a next-generation version of the search engine Bing.

Beyond that, you can invest in companies that have a relationship with OpenAI’s products. On the back end, this can mean investing in vendors who provide the hardware and software solutions that ChatGPT relies on. The most noteworthy company is NVIDIA (NVDA), which produces the advanced chipsets used for artificial intelligence machines.

On the front end, you can invest in companies that intend to use ChatGPT in their own products. Several firms have announced strategic partnerships with OpenAI to begin integrating the artificial intelligence into their own lines, such as Salesforce (CRM) and Snap (SNAP). One report by Forbes even suggests that Coca-Cola (KO) may integrate OpenAI into its business model. It’s not the same as investing directly in OpenAI itself, but it still will give your portfolio exposure to ChatGPT as a product.

How Can You Invest In AI?

Beyond investing in OpenAI, you can also look to invest in AI as a field overall. Over the past year, artificial intelligence has become a sort of four-minute mile. Nobody could build a system remotely like DALL-E or ChatGPT just a few years ago. Now, new breakthroughs emerge every few weeks from any number of places. So a good way to invest might be by looking for those other companies.

The most prominent AI companies right now are probably firms like Alphabet (GOOG), Tesla (TSLA) and Amazon (AMZN). All three are either heavily invested in their own artificial intelligence software or are helping to develop third-party programs. This is generally the closest thing you can get to investing in OpenAI, since in all three cases you will be investing in a firm developing AI software.

Beyond that, as with ChatGPT partnerships, you can begin looking for companies that will thrive on artificial intelligence. With this approach, your goal is to try to identify firms that can take advantage of the opportunities that AI offers. What sectors and companies will use this tool? Who will become more profitable in the long run because of it?

One way to answer this is by investing in the technology sector in general. You can buy stock in exchange-traded funds (ETF) or mutual funds that are indexed to the tech sector, or funds which are indexed to the NASDAQ market. You can also try to identify firms and sectors that will do well with artificial intelligence technology, such as companies that do automated customer service, large data-management firms and logistics companies. All of these are sectors that need to handle large volumes of data with complex, non-routine outputs, which is exactly what AI is likely to specialize in.

Bottom Line

You cannot invest directly in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, but that doesn’t mean you can’t invest in artificial intelligence. By seeking out companies and sectors most likely to profit off of data-driven, non-routine transactions, you can find companies that will likely thrive on this technology.

Investing Tips

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