ChatGPT Outage Leaves Users Stranded After OpenAI’s Major Infrastructure Announcement Raises Huge Questions

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On Thursday, January 23, 2025, OpenAI’s ChatGPT experienced a significant outage, leaving users worldwide unable to access the popular AI chatbot. OpenAI reported “elevated error rates” on its status page and stated that it was “working to implement a fix.” 

The disruption began just before midday in the UK, with users encountering “bad gateway” errors. The issue quickly spread, affecting users across the globe. At its peak, thousands reported difficulties accessing the service, highlighting the widespread reliance on ChatGPT for various tasks.

The timing of the outage is notable, occurring shortly after OpenAI announced its ambitious $500 billion Stargate infrastructure project. This incident underscores the need for investment in a robust infrastructure to support AI services.

Stargate aims to address that need. It is a project from OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle which President Trump has promised would ensure “the future of technology” in the U.S. Wall Street appears to concur, with some analysts talking about its potential to transform the tech industry.

But Stargate has its detractors, one of these being one of Trump’s closest advisors, Elon Musk, who is also, in the curious world of the US government, a competitor 

Musk, who started as a founder of Open AI, left the company and has become a vocal critic of the company and its CEO Sam Altman. “They don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote on X, his social media app.. “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has in the past tried to avoid confronting his former mentor was blunt in his reply, saying, “wrong, as you surely know.”

The announcement potentially left more questions than answers. Is this investment enough? Altman once said he need trillions of dollars in investment. Can this consortium raise the money? Will the build out be fast enough given current growth? And, one more question. Where does Microsoft fit in to this?

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