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PARIS: Since ChatGPT was launched in 2022, generative artificial intelligence (AI) has blossomed around large US companies, with a few European and Chinese rivals. Ahead of the Paris AI summit on Feb 10-11, here are the main players: Pioneering OpenAI US-based OpenAI emerged as the figurehead of generative AI when it released chatbot ChatGPT. The tool popularised everyday use of AI and sparked massive investment.
Since its founding, OpenAI has raised US$20bil (RM88.67bil), especially from top shareholder Microsoft. It is in talks to line up a further US$40bil (RM177.
34bil), the Wall Street Journal reported in January. CEO Sam Altman – briefly fired before returning in November 2023 – co-founded OpenAI as a non-profit with other Silicon Valley heavyweights, including Elon Musk. But the business is gradually changing its governance structure towards a regular profit-making enterprise.
US rival Anthropic Two former OpenAI workers, Dario and Daniela Amodei, founded Anthropic in 2021. It has made the tighter safeguards on its Claude model a selling point compared with competing AIs. Anthropic has not matched OpenAI's fundraising, but has the eye of several major players in the tech world.
Amazon has pumped in US$8bil (RM35.47bil), half of it in November last year. Other backers, including Google parent company Alphabet with US$3bil (RM13.
30bil), have brought Anthropic's total fundraising to US$12.9bil (RM57.19bil) since its creation.
Established players: Google and Meta ChatGPT spurred existing tech giants into an innovation arms race fuelled by vast war chests. Meta opened its Llama model to developers in February 2023, since developing it further with versions 2 and 3. On its Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads platforms, Meta has been pushing its MetaAI conversational assistant.
Meta has blocked access to the tool from Europe, citing the "unpredictable nature of the European regulatory environment". Last month, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to invest up to US$65bil (RM288.17bil) per year, mostly in AI.
Google followed in OpenAI's footsteps with its Bard chatbot, released to the public in 2023. It was renamed Gemini in February 2024 after an update to the model. Google chiefs "don't talk about our specific numbers" for AI investment in public, the head of its Deepmind AI research unit Demis Hassabis said in April last year.
French underdog Mistral Mistral was founded in May 2023 by French developers Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample and Timothee Lacroix, all with experience working in the tech giants' research labs. The start-up announced at launch that it had raised €100mil (RM460.47mil), setting itself up as a European alternative to US giants.
Mistral's chatbot "Le Chat" – a play on the French word for "cat" as well as the English "chat" – was released in February 2024. The company also revealed a partnership with Microsoft, which invested US$15mil (RM66.51mil).
Last month AFP news agency signed a deal with Mistral allowing the startup's chatbot to draw on the news agency's articles to formulate responses. Later, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the firm said it was aiming for a stock market flotation to preserve its independence from bigger players. In total, Mistral has raised over €1bil (RM4.
60bil) in funding. The DeepSeek shock Chinese startup DeekSeek revealed its R1 chatbot at the end of January. Its stunning entry into the crowded AI field sent stocks of several tech giants including chipmaker Nvidia plunging.
Its great innovation was achieving results similar to other models for a much lower cost. "DeepSeek's R1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they're able to deliver for the price," OpenAI's Sam Altman posted on X in response. But the US company has accused DeepSeek and others of reverse-engineering its models from OpenAI's offerings in a process known as "distillation".
Alibaba joins the race The most recent arrival in conversational tools is Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba's Qwen2.5-Max, launched on Thursday. Available only to developers for now, the company has claimed its AI model is capable of outperforming competitors.
– AFP.
