OpenAI means business. The artificial intelligence (AI) research specialist turned heads when it introduced the ChatGPT chatbot last year, and again with the stronger GPT-4 version in the spring. This week, OpenAI announced an even stronger and more flexible spin on the ChatGPT model. The ChatGPT Enterprise service is not a consumer-grade service but a serious business productivity tool.
Let's see what's new in ChatGPT Enterprise and how the upgraded AI service can help investors.
What's new with ChatGPT Enterprise?
ChatGPT Enterprise offers several benefits over the Plus version, available to anyone for $20 per month. There is no firm subscription price for the business-class option, where the buyer is encouraged to contact OpenAI's sales department and work out a deal for their company's specific needs.
The upgraded features include:
- Unlimited access to the more powerful GPT-4 model. The Plus plan is limited to 50 queries every three hours.
- Faster processing.
- Longer inputs.
- Chat templates can be shared within the user's organization.
- A central admin console with analytic tools to manage the client organization's ChatGPT workflows.
- End-to-end encrypting, including for stored data.
- Credits to use on OpenAI's AI app-building development platform.
- And the real cherry on top — “enterprise data is not used for training” of the AI system.
More features will follow over time. For example, OpenAI is working on ChatGPT features catering to specific roles such as marketing, customer support, or data analysts. Furthermore, future versions will be able to incorporate and analyze company-specific data by integrating ChatGPT's learning model with the client's existing IT services.
The potential business impact
So the Enterprise plan really does fit the bill for use in a corporate IT environment. From hardened security and negotiable pricing to central administration and faster processing, every detail of the feature list would be right at home in an enterprise product from Microsoft (MSFT), IBM, or Oracle.
OpenAI expects ChatGPT Enterprise to be a hit. Over 80% of Fortune 500 companies already have active ChatGPT Plus accounts, according to the company's analysis. If the as-yet unannounced subscription cost is an issue, smaller businesses will soon have a ChatGPT Business plan with fewer features and lower costs. In other words, the puzzle pieces are falling into place to land plenty of premium-class ChatGPT customers with relative ease. Converting Plus clients who already use the service to using the appropriate class of business-grade services shouldn't be too difficult.
In the long run, the ChatGPT Enterprise and Business services look ready to generate serious revenue streams for OpenAI.
Why you can't buy OpenAI stock yet…
You can't invest in OpenAI yet. The company has not yet entered the public stock market with an initial public offering (IPO), and co-founder Sam Altman says he has no plans of taking that route to Wall Street.
However, the company has a long history of venture capital funding, raising more than $11 billion over seven years. Nearly all of the incoming funds flowed in from Microsoft, starting with a $1 billion investment in 2019 and a massive $10 billion push seven months ago. Based on the latest round of private equity investments, OpenAI would be worth at least $29 billion on the open market today.
Time will tell whether Altman holds his ground and stays out of the public market. OpenAI would not be the first corporation of potentially titanic size to stay private forever, after all. Floridian supermarket chain Publix tallied sales of $48 billion in 2022 and oil refining giant Koch Industries collected $125 billion last year, for example.
OpenAI is much smaller than these industry giants and doesn't appear on a list of the 250 largest private companies in America. Hence, its annual sales probably don't exceed $2 billion yet.
…but there are other ways to invest in OpenAI's future prospects
So the closest thing to owning OpenAI stock today would be buying shares of Microsoft, which owns about 38% of the company.
With Microsoft's annual sales at a whopping $212 billion, don't expect ChatGPT Enterprise to be an instant game-changer on the balance sheet. However, this nascent revenue stream could evolve into a lucrative venture down the road, turning OpenAI into a profitable, self-sustaining tech powerhouse. In the grand scheme of things, such an outcome could even start to look more significant to Microsoft's overall financial picture.
And suppose it gets far enough that Microsoft collects significant bottom-line profits from its near-subsidiary. In that case, we'll probably have a dynamic duo of successful AI experts on our hands. Remember, Microsoft is already incorporating ChatGPT features in many of its traditional products, from the Bing search engine to Office 365.
So if you agree that OpenAI seems to have a game-changing business driver in ChatGPT Enterprise, you should tap into Microsoft's stock today. You probably won't find a more direct way to invest in OpenAI anytime soon, and Redmond's software empire should benefit from OpenAI's success.
