OpenAI seeks fresh funding round at valuation over $100 billion
Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp., according to data from CBInsights. OpenAI declined to comment. 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. OpenAI’s rocketing valuation mirrors the AI frenzy it kicked off one year ago after releasing ChatGPT, a chatbot capable of composing eerily human sentences and even poetry in response to simple prompts. The company became Silicon Valley’s hottest startup, raising $13 billion to date from Microsoft Corp., and spurred a new appreciation for the promise of AI that changed the tech industry landscape within a few months.
Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. have since 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. OpenAI has also held discussions to raise funding for a new chip venture with Abu Dhabi-based G42, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The startup has discussed raising between $8 billion and $10 billion from G42, said one of the people, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss confidential information. It’s unclear whether the chips venture and wider company funding efforts are related. OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman had been seeking capital for the chipmaking project, code-named Tigris.
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