What is ChatGPT and what makes it worth a possible $30 billion?

ChatGPT, a chatbot launched by OpenAI in November 2022, is the tech industry's latest step in generative artificial intelligence. The AI bot has been trending on Twitter and amassed over a million users within five days of its launch.

OpenAI, the developer behind ChatGPT, is now trying to raise capital at a valuation of almost $30 billion, Financial Times reports. The company is looking for investors to purchase shares from current holders and carry out a tender offer of existing shares.

This valuation could make OpenAI one of the most valuable U.S. startups, The Wall Street Journal reported, despite it reporting little revenue so far. It would chart higher than several other tech companies such as Dell, HP, eBay, Zoom, Spotify, Snap Inc and Palantir, to name a few.

The company was previously valued at $14 billion in 2021, said a WSJ report.  It was founded in 2015 as a research nonprofit by CEO Sam Altman from Chicago.

A language processing AI model, ChatGPT can generate text and images to engage in human-like interactions. The chatbot can tell you jokes, play chess with you and can even fix your code. Its model uses a reinforcement learning method and has been trained using several resources.

Elon Musk, who has since announced that he will quit as CEO, paused ChatGPT's access to the Twitter database as the company OpenAI was no longer "open-source and non-profit."

"ChatGPT is scary good. We are not far from dangerously strong AI," Musk had tweeted.