OpenAI completes deal that values company at $80 billion
OpenAI has completed a deal that values the San Francisco artificial intelligence company at $80 billion or more, nearly triple its valuation in less than 10 months, according to three people with knowledge of the deal.
The company would sell existing shares in a so-called tender offer led by venture firm Thrive Capital, the people said. The deal lets employees cash out their shares in the company, rather than a traditional funding round that would raise money for business operations.
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Offering CollegeCourseWebsiteIIM KozhikodeIIMK Advanced Data Science For ManagersVisitMITMIT Technology Leadership and InnovationVisitIndian School of BusinessISB Product ManagementVisit OpenAI, which declined to comment, is now one of the world's most valuable tech startups, behind ByteDance and SpaceX, according to figures from data tracker CB Insights.
The deal is another example of the Silicon Valley deal-making machine pumping money into a handful of companies that specialize in generative AI — technology that can generate text, sounds and images on its own. The funding boom kicked off early last year, after OpenAI captured the public's imagination with the release of the online chatbot ChatGPT.
(The New York Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, in December, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems.)
The deal comes at a critical time for OpenAI, providing it with an important vote of confidence after a year of controversy. In
