This week, shares of edtech company Chegg dropped significantly after announcing its Q1 results that exceeded analysts expectations. During their earnings call, Chegg’s executives revealed that its ability to add new subscribers was being impaired by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which threw doubts into the company’s abilities to make predictions about its future financial performance.
Chegg’s drastic decrease in value is certainly not the first but one of the most dramatic cases of AI tools derailing established companies. With the recent announcement that Chegg is building a chatbot with GPT-4 and quoting OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the question remains what the implications are for Chegg, edtech, and other sectors as AI begins to reshape the modern world.
Chegg is an American educational technology and textbook rental company that rents books, e-textbooks and other educational materials. Founded in 2005, the company has since grown to become the largest textbook rental company in the United States, operating both directly and through various college bookstores.
Sam Altman is an American entrepreneur, investor, and computer programmer. He is the president of Y Combinator, a company founded in 2005 that funds startups, and he has a strong presence in the tech industry, having served on the board of directors of organizations such as Facebook, OpenAI, and Github. Altman’s efforts have helped the startup ecosystem grow, making him a powerful and influential figure in the business world.
