Big Tech Benefits the Most as ChatGPT Turns 2

As of this weekend, OpenAI’s ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot is 2 years old.

And as Bloomberg News columnists Parmy Olson and Carolyn Silverman argued in an opinion piece Friday (Nov. 29), it has been the world’s tech giants — and not “all humanity” as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has envisioned — reaping the biggest rewards from this boom.

For example, the market capitalization for the six largest tech companies has increased — in aggregate — by more than $8 trillion since ChatGPT debuted.

The tech sector has fueled a 30% uptick in the S&P 500 since January 2022, Nvidia has become the world’s leading chip company, and Microsoft, Amazon and Google have all seen their cloud revenue jump.

“As hype about an AI revolution gripped the market and sent businesses scrambling to remain competitive, it raises an uncomfortable prospect: that this supposedly revolutionary technology might never deliver on its promise of broad economic transformation, but instead just concentrate more wealth at the top,” Olson and Silverman wrote.

Meanwhile, 40% of consulting giant McKinsey’s business this year is expected to be AI-related, while IBM and Accenture are also enjoying the AI boom.

The column argues that an “healthier outcome” would be for startups and non-tech companies to reap some of these rewards. However, they write, these companies face the daunting prospect of building a business around app or enterprise software only for a tech giant to unveil the same thing and drive them out of business.

It’s also tough for entrepreneurs to build a “foundation” AI model to compete with the likes of ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude or Meta’s Llama.

In other AI news, recent research by PYMNTS Intelligence finds that chief operating officers (COOs) are customizing generative AI (GenAI) to maximize the impact of the technology.

The report “COOs Find the Key for a Positive ROI on GenAI: Customization” shows these executives see GenAI as a major driver of future success, expecting to see significant returns on investment by the end of the decade.

“Customization is key to unlocking the full potential of GenAI, with COOs who tailor software to their company’s needs reporting significantly higher returns on investment,” PYMNTS wrote last week. “According to the report, 46% of companies using customized GenAI tools report very positive ROI, compared to just 22% of those relying on off-the-shelf large language models (LLMs). This highlights the effectiveness of bespoke solutions in increasing GenAI’s impact.”