• ChatGPT was first released two years ago.
• Since then, its user base has doubled to 200 million weekly users.
• Major companies, entrepreneurs, and users remain optimistic about its transformative power.

It’s been two years since OpenAI released its flagship chatbot, ChatGPT.

And a lot has changed in the world since then.

For one, ChatGPT has helped turbocharge global investment in generative AI.

Funding in the space grew fivefold from 2022 to 2023 alone, according to CB Insights. The biggest beneficiaries of the generative AI boom have been the biggest companies. Tech companies on the S&P 500 have seen a 30% gain since January 2022, compared to only 15% for small-cap companies, Bloomberg reported.

Similarly, consulting firms are expecting AI to make up an increasing portion of their revenue. Boston Consulting Group generates a fifth of its revenue from AI, and much of that work involves advising clients on generative AI, a spokesperson told Business Insider. Almost 40% of McKinsey’s work now comes from AI, and a significant portion of that is moving to generative AI, Ben Ellencweig, a senior partner who leads alliances, acquisitions, and partnerships globally for McKinsey’s AI arm, QuantumBlack, told BI.

Smaller companies have been forced to rely on larger ones, either by building applications on existing large language models or waiting for their next major developer tool release.

Still, young developers are optimistic that ChatGPT will level the playing field and believe it’s only a matter of time before they catch up to bigger players. “You still have your Big Tech companies lying around, but they’re much more vulnerable because the bleeding edge of AI has basically been democratized,” Bryan Chiang, a recent Stanford graduate who built RizzGPT, told Business Insider.

Then, of course, there is ChatGPT’s impact on regular users.

In August, it reached more than 200 million weekly active users, double the number it had the previous fall. In October, it rolled out a new search feature that provides “links to relevant web sources” when asked a question, introducing a serious threat to Google’s dominance.

In September, OpenAI previewed o1, a series of AI models that it says are “designed to spend more time thinking before they respond.” ChatGPT Plus and Team users can access the models in ChatGPT. Users hope a full version will be released to the public in the coming year.

Business Insider asked ChatGPT what age means to it.

“Age, to me, is an interesting concept — it’s a way of measuring the passage of time, but it doesn’t define who someone is or what they’re capable of,” it responded.