Sam Altman on ChatGPT’s rapid growth: ‘We’re struggling’ as OpenAI scaled overnight

The launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 caused an unprecedented surge in popularity, catapulting OpenAI into the technology spotlight. Before this meteoric rise, OpenAI was primarily a research organization, little known outside of specialist circles. However, the success of ChatGPT quickly turned OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman into household names.

Reflecting on this meteoric journey, Altman recently discussed the enormous challenges of scaling OpenAI in a conversation with The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) podcast. “The speed of change was extraordinary,” he noted, explaining how OpenAI had to transform itself from a research laboratory into a large-scale customer-facing company almost overnight. “You have time to go from zero to a million to a billion, but you don’t have to do it in two years,” Altman added, alluding to the rapid growth trajectory that most companies experience within a few years.

OpenAI was not originally intended to be a typical Silicon Valley startup designed to scale quickly. “We didn’t really have a company in the sense of a traditional startup serving many customers,” Altman admitted. His team had to build the infrastructure in real time, often without any established guidance.

The fast pace presented a steep learning curve for Altman, who admitted he had to learn a lot on the fly. “There were a lot of things that I should have had more time to study,” he said, adding: “There is no textbook for this, and if there was one, no one gave it to me. We all made it somehow.”

Since the launch of ChatGPT, OpenAI has emerged as a leader in the artificial intelligence industry, paving the way for competitors like Google and Meta to develop their own chatbots. Reports even suggested a “code red” scenario within Google as it struggled to respond to the success of ChatGPT. Meanwhile, Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, has also launched its own AI-powered tools, including chatbot CoPilot (formerly Bing).