A Goldman Sachs chart about the "diving of ChatGPT visits" caused widespread panic, but it turned out to be a false alarm.
The alarm bells of the "AI bubble" theory have been sounded again and again, and the voices of doubt that "AI investment returns are unlikely to meet expectations" have become louder and louder. Faced with this AI feast that has lasted for more than a year, people are afraid of leaving too early and being the ones to pay the bill. Therefore, any negative changes in industry data can attract high attention from the market - especially OpenAI's movements.
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A chart in a report by Goldman Sachs analyst Peter Oppenheimer recently caused widespread panic.
According to this chart, ChatGPT's website traffic dropped precipitously in April and May this year. The chart does not show the specific website domain name, but only indicates that the data comes from Similarweb.
Last Friday, Eastern Time, large technology stocks in the U.S. stock market fell across the board, with Nvidia and Google falling more than 4%, and Amazon and Meta falling more than 3%. Some media pointed out that the decline was partly due to this chart from Goldman Sachs.
But the "dive in visits" ultimately proved to be just a false alarm.
In April and May of this year, OpenAI ChatGPT changed its domain name from chat.openai.com to chatgpt.com. Goldman Sachs' report did not seem to include the new domain name visits in the statistics .
Similarweb, the data source for this Goldman Sachs chart, also pointed out yesterday that the traffic decline was due to ChatGPT's old links (an OpenAI subdomain), and the reason for the decline was the launch of the new ChatGPT homepage .
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Looking back at the early days of the AI boom, the rapid growth of data indicated the prosperity of the industry. On the other hand, when the "trust" of the entire industry is shaky, the plunge in data will naturally be seen as a signal of escape.
So, what are the actual traffic and other data of these AI websites?
Edward Suh, founder of venture capital firm Alpine Ventures, superimposed the traffic statistics of ChatGPT's new and old domain names to create a statistical chart. From this, we can see that ChatGPT's overall traffic has generally maintained an upward trend since the beginning of this year .
Similarly, one of ChatGPT's competitors, Claude.ai, has also seen a significant jump in traffic this year .
Source: Sherwood
Traffic and visits are just data; real money income may be more convincing.
According to data from Guosheng Securities, global AI application revenue surged 51% year-on-year to $2 billion from January to August, and is expected to reach $3.3 billion for the full year . The North American market is the main source of revenue, accounting for 47%; India has become the largest market for downloads, accounting for 21%. Among them, ChatGPT has been downloaded more than 160 million times, with revenue of nearly $230 million, cumulative revenue exceeding $270 million, and more than 190 million monthly active users.
Although the rumor was eventually debunked, the overall AI application data is still climbing. However, judging from the Goldman Sachs chart’s “oolong” incident, the entire market is “frightened” when it comes to the discussion of AI sustainability.
Has the growth potential of AI technology been misjudged? Will the high investments in AI yield corresponding returns? Is there enough money to keep “burning money for growth”? Is this a carnival of technology and productivity, or a self-indulgent hype and bubble? Investors need more evidence to convince themselves and the people in the other camp.
The feast might still go on, but everyone clearly wanted to sit closer to the emergency exit.
This article comes from the WeChat public account "Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" , author: Zheng Yuanfang, published by 36Kr with authorization.
