OpenAI is in talks to raise up to $100 billion in a funding round that could value the ChatGPT maker at up to $830 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursdayciting anonymous sources.
The company aims to raise the funding by the end of the calendar first quarter of next year and may ask sovereign wealth funds to invest in the round, the WSJ reported. Information first was mentioned news of the deal, though he said the fundraising would give OpenAI a $750 billion price tag.
The funding will come as OpenAI commits to spending trillions of dollars and signing deals around the world as the company tries to stay ahead of the race to develop AI technology. The cash infusion would also help the company with its inference spending, which appears to be funded more by cash than cloud credits, suggesting the company’s computing costs have grown beyond what partnerships and credits can subsidize.
And, with competition intensifying from rivals like Anthropic and Google, OpenAI has had to hit the gas to release new models and expand its presence in the developer and tool ecosystem.
Meanwhile, broader sentiment around artificial intelligence she has recently had a cold as investors begin to doubt whether the pace of debt-fueled investment by giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle and OpenAI itself can be sustained over the long term. It also doesn’t help that chips are produced in a hurry due to shortages in the supply of memory chips, which threatens to affect the wider technology sector.
OpenAI has also been rumored to be working on one IPO as a way to raise tens of billions and finance its development efforts, which are said to be today creating annual operating rate of approximately $20 billion. The company is also rumored to be courting Amazon for a $10 billion investment that would also give the AI lab access to the tech giant’s new AI chips.
If the fundraising happens, it will add a significant amount to OpenAI’s coffers, which currently stand at more than $64 billion, according to PitchBook data. The company was recently valued at about $500 billion in a secondary transaction.
OpenAI did not immediately return a request for comment.
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