OpenAI has reportedly sealed a deal that, according to insiders, hiked the company’s value to approximately $80bn. A New York Times report claimed that the artificial intelligence (AI) research and deployment organisation is planning to sell shares in a tender-type agreement steered by investment firm Thrive Capital.
In terms of the agreement, OpenAI employees could cash out their shares. By doing this, the company can raise funds without following traditional funding routes. To date, OpenAI has yet to give a response.
The company did the same in 2023 when Thrive Capital, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and K2 Global bought OpenAI shares through a tender offer. Previous funding rounds included a $10bn investment by Microsoft Corporation (MSFT).
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OpenAI’s ChatGPT took the tech world by storm in 2022 when it revolutionised text generation and prediction. On 15 February 2024, the company announced the launch of its latest AI initiative, Sora, a text-to-video model that aims to replicate and simulate physical motions. At present, this AI functionality generates one-minute-long videos.
On Wednesday, 14 February, the day before the Sora launch, OpenAI said that it is planning to expand the memory of ChatGPT. Regarding the Sora model, the company stated:
Our results suggest that scaling video generation models is a promising path towards building general purpose simulators of the physical world.
This deal would be the largest fund backing in the company’s history. These investments have come under the radar of financial regulators. In late January, the US Federal Trade Commission indicated that it is investigating large investments from tech giants Microsoft, Alphabet Inc. (GOOG), and Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) in AI companies to gauge competitive fairness
