Openai said Monday it completed a $40 billion funding agreement that nearly doubled the valuation of the well-known company just six months ago.
The new funding round, led by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, valued Openai at $300 billion and, together with rocket companies SpaceX and Tiktok manufacturers, Rocket Company SpaceX and bytedance, has become one of the most valuable private companies in the world.
Openai launched the artificial intelligence boom in late 2022 with the release of the online chatbot ChatGpt. The latest investment round shows that the high-tech industry's excitement for AI remains strong, even amid concerns about the effectiveness and safety of fast improvement technologies.
“This investment will help us push frontiers and make AI more useful in our daily lives,” Openai CEO Sam Altman said in a statement in the New York Times.
The company also said 500 million people are actively using ChatGpt every week, up from 400 million in late February, with 20 million paying to use the more advanced version of the chatbot.
According to those familiar with the transaction that they spoke in an anonymity state, the new investment will be made in two parts. The first $10 billion arrived soon, and another $30 billion arrived by the end of the year, the person said.
Softbank Group offers 75% of the total, with the rest coming from other investors such as Microsoft, Thrive Capital, Coatue, and Altimeter. Microsoft and Thrive Capital led Openai's previous investment rounds.
Altman created Openai as a nonprofit in 2015, along with Tesla CEO Elon Musk and others. In 2018, after Musk left the organization after a fight for control, Altman attached Openai to a commercial enterprise, allowing him to raise the billions of dollars needed to build artificial intelligence technology.
However, the nonprofit maintained control of the company. Last year, Altman and his company began working on a plan to shift the management of the company from a nonprofit to an for-profit company to Openai investors.
Shortly afterwards, Musk sued Openy and Altman, alleging that he had breached the company's incorporation agreement by raising commercial profits over public interest.
Openai plans to move the company's management to public benefits companies or PBC, a for-profit enterprise designed to create public and social benefits. If this shift is not completed by the end of the year, SoftBank has the option of reducing its total contribution to $20 billion if it is familiar with the latest investment transactions.
Musk and the investor consortium escalated a long-standing feud with Altman this year by offering to buy more than $97 billion in assets from the nonprofit that manages the open. Openai's board of directors declined the bid.
However, the bid could complicate Altman's efforts to separate Altman's company from the nonprofit committee and raise the billions needed for Openai to build new technology.
(Times sued Openai and its partner Microsoft, alleging that it infringes copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems. Both companies denied the allegations in the lawsuit.)
