How Good Is The Apple Deal for OpenAI?

Last June, OpenAI landed in headlines for its splashy partnership with Apple. The iPhone maker’s Siri assistant would tap OpenAI’s models and ChatGPT to handle some queries and also help customers with writing and generating images.

It looked like a huge win for the ChatGPT maker—at first. Nine months later, we’re wondering whether the deal has benefited OpenAI much.

Financially, the partnership probably hasn’t been helpful to OpenAI. Apple isn’t paying OpenAI, and fulfilling iPhone customers’ requests may have put more pressure on OpenAI's already-tight computing resources.

OpenAI hoped greater exposure to consumers through Apple products would help it sell paid subscriptions to its chatbot. There’s no doubt having ChatGPT pop up on iPhones is likely helpful for ChatGPT’s brand awareness. Whether that’s helped OpenAI sell more subscriptions, though, is hard to know.