ChatGPT maker, OpenAI is in early discussions to raise a fresh round of funding at a valuation at or above $100 billion.
A Bloomberg report citing people who know the matter said the deal would confirm OpenAI as one of the world’s most valuable startups. Investors potentially involved in the fundraising round have been included in preliminary discussions, according to those who asked not to be identified to discuss private matters. Details like the terms, valuation, and timing of the funding round haven’t yet been finalized and could still change, the people said.
If the funding round happens as planned, it would make the artificial intelligence darling the second-most valuable startup in the US, behind only Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp., according to data from CBInsights.
According to the report, the company is set to complete a separate tender offer in early January, which would allow employees to sell their shares at a valuation of $86 billion, Bloomberg previously reported. That is being led by Thrive Capital and saw more demand from investors than there was availability, people familiar with the matter have said.
ChatGPT’s growth
- This is one year after the launch of the popular AI tool, ChatGPT, which has sparked a global AI revolution throughout 2023.
- On the back of over $10 billion in investments from Microsoft, OpenAI has become a dominant force in the AI industry.
- At OpenAI’s first developer conference in Francisco last month, where it unveiled GPT-4 Turbo, the company’s CEO, Sam Altman disclosed that ChatGPT was recording more than 100 million weekly active users.
- He added that over two million developers use the platform, including more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies.
- ChatGPT’s popularity and usage have been growing despite other rivals such as Google’s Bard. Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. have poured billions into OpenAI-rival Anthropic.
Salesforce Inc. led an investment into Hugging Face that valued it at $4.5 billion, and Nvidia Corp., which makes many of the semiconductors that power AI tasks, said earlier this month it made more than two dozen investments in 2023.
Tigris project
- OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman had been seeking capital for the chipmaking project, code-named Tigris. The goal is to produce semiconductors that can compete with those from Nvidia, which currently dominates the AI chip market, Bloomberg News reported last month.
- In October, G42 announced a partnership with OpenAI “to deliver cutting-edge AI solutions to the UAE and regional markets.” No financial details were provided.
- The firm, founded in 2018, is led by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser and chair of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
