OpenAI has just completed a historic funding round, raising $6.6 billion in investment at a $157 billion valuation.
The financing was led by Thrive Capital, which provided $1 billion and entered into a special agreement allowing it to invest another billion next year (but at the same valuation for OpenAI) if the AI startup reaches its revenue target. The latter depends, among other things, on whether OpenAI will be restructured as a commercial company — if this does not happen within two years, investors can demand their money back.
Last week, Reuters reported that OpenAI is considering becoming a public benefit corporation (like Anthropic).
Also among the investors are Microsoft, Nvidia, SoftBank, but not Apple, which refused to fund the project despite long negotiations, notes Axios.
The Verge writes that OpenAI has asked investors not to support competitors’ startups, including Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI. It is worth reminding that the latter raised $6 billion in financing in May.
OpenAI’s valuation in its latest round of funding is 40 times its reported revenue, an unprecedented figure that underscores how much excitement there is around AI in Silicon Valley.
According to The New York TimesOpenAI’s monthly revenue reached $300 million in August, while the company expects approximately $3.7 billion in annual sales in 2024 (and anticipates that its revenue will reach $11.6 billion next year).
«The funding will allow us to double our leadership in cutting-edge artificial intelligence research, increase our computing power, and continue to build tools that help people solve complex problems», — OpenAI said in a statement in blog.
Last week, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and two leading researchers left the company amid numerous reports about cultural tensions between product and security teams. In May, the company Ilya Sutskever, chief researcher, also left, which already in June announced the creating your own AI startup — for «secure superintelligence».