OpenAI Announces Recovery of ChatGPT Service After Extended Outage

OpenAI announced in a Thursday morning post on X that its widely-used ChatGPT assistant, Sora video generator, and programming interface for developers were fully operational again after experiencing several hours of downtime.

ChatGPT has become a mainstream tool, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealing on December 4 that the platform now serves 300 million active users every week. On Wednesday, Apple launched updates for its iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices, adding ChatGPT integrations to their software.

According to OpenAI’s status page, ChatGPT experienced an outage lasting just over four hours. This was notably shorter than the five-hour downtime the service faced in June.

In October, OpenAI reached a valuation of $157 billion following a funding round backed by existing investor Microsoft and chipmaker Nvidia. The company’s rapid growth began with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, which has since become one of the biggest tech stories in recent years.

Earlier this week, OpenAI announced the release of its Sora tool to users in the U.S. and many other countries. However, on Tuesday, Altman acknowledged on X that the company had “significantly underestimated the demand for Sora,” and that it would take some time to provide access to everyone.