Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s widely used chatbot, ChatGPT, resumed service following a brief outage that impacted thousands of users, the company confirmed on Friday.

“Issues with ChatGPT have now been resolved,” OpenAI announced on its website, noting that most users regained access by 4:34 p.m. PT (0034 GMT on Saturday), though a few continued to face issues until 5 p.m. (0100 GMT on Saturday).

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the downtime on X, sharing that ChatGPT was offline for around 30 minutes and expressing, “We are much, much better at reliability than we used to be, but clearly more work in front of us,” accompanied by a frown emoji.

According to Downdetector.com, which tracks service disruptions, the outage affected more than 19,403 users as of 7:13 p.m. ET (0013 GMT on Saturday).

Since its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT has gained 250 million weekly active users, contributing to OpenAI’s skyrocketing valuation from $14 billion in 2021 to $157 billion today. Revenue has also soared to $3.6 billion, far surpassing Altman’s initial forecasts.

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