The AI chatbot ChatGPT, which has significantly triggered the hype around Artificial Intelligence, has surpassed the threshold of 200 million monthly active users. The development company OpenAI announced that the number of users has doubled since November of last year. ChatGPT impresses with its ability to generate human-like texts, write software code, and summarize information efficiently.

OpenAI is currently in discussions about a new funding round that could value the company at around 100 billion dollars. According to media reports, potential investors include Apple and the semiconductor manufacturer NVIDIA. These partnerships could be of great significance for the future development of ChatGPT.

Apple had already won OpenAI as a partner in June. While Apple develops its own AI software aimed at user personal information, ChatGPT is intended to be available for general inquiries and could gain a significant number of new users through integration into the iPhone platform.

NVIDIA, whose chips play a central role in data centers for AI applications, could also become an important partner for OpenAI. The next generation of NVIDIA chips, known as Blackwell, is expected to be released in the coming months, albeit initially in limited quantities.

So far, Microsoft is the largest investor in ChatGPT. With the billions that the software giant has invested, OpenAI has been able to finance the further development of the chatbot. Microsoft is currently integrating OpenAI's technology into a variety of its products.

In pre-market trading on NASDAQ, Microsoft shares remained stable and were temporarily up 0.66 percent at 415.85 US dollars.