NEW YORK: OpenAI is in early discussions to raise a fresh round of funding at a valuation at or above US$100bil, people with knowledge of the matter say, a deal that would cement the ChatGPT maker as one of the world’s most valuable startups.
Investors potentially involved in the fundraising round have been included in preliminary discussions, according to the people, who asked not to be identified to discuss private matters.
Details like the terms, valuation and timing of the funding round haven’t yet been finalised and could still change, the people said.
If the funding round happens as planned, it would make the artificial intelligence (AI) darling the second-most valuable startup in the United States, behind only Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp, according to data from CBInsights.
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 US$86bil, 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 US$13bil 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 US$4.5bil, 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. — Bloomberg
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