DALL·E

DALL-E is made by OpenAI, an AI research and deployment company founded in 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco. OpenAI operates a capped-profit subsidiary under a nonprofit parent and is the maker of ChatGPT, the GPT model family, and image and audio models.

DALL-E launched in January 2021, followed by DALL-E 2 in 2022 and DALL-E 3 in 2023. OpenAI has progressively folded image generation into ChatGPT and its GPT-4o/GPT Image models, positioning image creation as part of a broader multimodal assistant rather than a standalone product.

DALL-E 3 generated images at resolutions such as 1024x1024, 1024x1792, and 1792x1024, with strong prompt adherence, improved in-image text rendering, and 'vivid' and 'natural' style options. Its integration with ChatGPT allowed automatic prompt rewriting and iterative refinement through conversation.

The model was available programmatically through the OpenAI Images API for developers, and also surfaced in Microsoft products such as Bing Image Creator and Microsoft Designer. OpenAI has since steered users toward GPT-4o and GPT Image models for native, higher-fidelity generation and editing.

DALL-E serves consumers, content creators, marketers, social media managers, designers, and developers who need on-demand illustrations, concept art, and marketing or social graphics without traditional design tools.

DALL-E is a product of OpenAI and has no separate funding. OpenAI has raised very large amounts of capital, including multibillion-dollar investment from Microsoft and, in 2025, a SoftBank-led round reported around $40 billion, valuing the company in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Exact figures vary by source and date; the key fact is that DALL-E is fully owned and funded within OpenAI.