According to ChainCatcher, a16z general partner Andrew Chen discussed the commercial potential of ChatGPT on social media. Chen pointed out that OpenAI's ChatGPT has reached an astonishing scale of more than 200 million users per week in just a few years. He raised several questions worth thinking about:
Has anyone analyzed ChatGPT's average number of searches per person and revenue per impression? How would a business like ChatGPT perform if it adopted an ad monetization model similar to Google's?
Chen believes that some products with a similar user base, such as the Firefox browser, had annual revenues of nearly $1 billion at their peak. If ChatGPT were free to use, its monthly active users could increase significantly.
He said that large language model (LLM) products have the potential to become disruptors in the search business and may achieve considerable monetization capabilities.
Chen also noted that it’s worth wondering whether LLM will increase overall search volume or simply take market share from existing search engines like Google.
