Microsoft has poured approximately $13 billion into OpenAI over the past few years. (document)
San Francisco:
OpenAI has struck a deal with investors that reportedly values the California startup at $80 billion or more, following a roller-coaster year for the inventor of ChatGPT.
The agreement, reported by The New York Times but not confirmed by OpenAI, means the value of the company, a global leader in generative artificial intelligence, will nearly triple in less than 10 months.
The San Francisco-based company will reportedly sell existing shares to investors led by Thrive Capital.
It will allow executives and employees to sell stock at deeply discounted prices, just three months after the company weathered a major crisis that saw co-founder and CEO Sam Altman fired, It was recalled a few days later.
OpenAI launched its ChatGPT program at the end of 2022, leading an artificial intelligence revolution.
The interface’s immediate success sparked considerable interest in cutting-edge technology capable of generating text, sounds, and images on demand.
Microsoft is already an investor in the startup and has stepped up its involvement. The software giant has poured about $13 billion into OpenAI over the past few years.
It has competed so fiercely with Google in developing and launching new tools that harness its AI-generating capabilities that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in January launched an investigation into Microsoft, Google and Amazon’s massive investments in AI. Specialized start-ups.
OpenAI, a non-profit organization founded in 2015, faced a major crisis last November.
The company’s board fired CEO Sam Altman, one of Silicon Valley’s most charismatic figures, accusing him of a lack of “transparency.”
In the days that followed, Microsoft tried to hire him, while OpenAI executives and most employees asked those who supported Altman’s ouster to resign and rehire him.
Within a week, Altman was back at work and several board members resigned.
On Friday, OpenAI (the developer of not only ChatGPT but also the image-generating DALL-E) released a new tool called “Sora” that can create minute-long photorealistic videos based on simple requirements .
OpenAI reached a similar agreement with venture capital firms including Thrive Capital, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz early last year, valuing the company at $29 billion, The Times reported.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
