TapTechNews October 3rd news, Reuters released a blog post today (October 3rd) reporting that OpenAI announced on Wednesday local time in the US that it has successfully raised $6.6 billion (TapTechNews note: currently about 46.364 billion RMB yuan). The company's valuation reached $157 billion (currently about 1.1 trillion RMB yuan), and in just 9 months, the company's valuation nearly doubled, setting the highest record in Silicon Valley history.
TapTechNews quoted FT reports that during this financing process, OpenAI experienced many turmoil. In addition to the departure of many internal co-founders, there were also many situations in this financing.
According to three people familiar with the situation, during the negotiation, OpenAI clearly stated that it hopes to obtain an exclusive financing arrangement and hopes that investors will only invest in OpenAI in the AI field, hoping for this exclusive relationship to limit the opportunities for competitors to obtain capital and strategic partnerships.
Many venture capitals said that this kind of request is not common, after all, many companies are accustomed to diversifying investments in certain fields. OpenAI hopes to obtain special terms and ultra-high valuations to convince investors that it will lead the next wave of artificial intelligence innovation.
This round of financing is led by ThriveCapital, which has already invested about $1.3 billion in OpenAI, of which $750 million comes from its own fund and $550 million comes from other investors.
The person said that Thrive can also choose to invest up to $1 billion more at the same $157 billion valuation by 2025.
Microsoft, chipmaker NVIDIA, tech giant SoftBank, UAE investment company MGX, etc. are also investing in OpenAI.
According to the financial documents reviewed by The New York Times, this startup company expects sales of about $3.7 billion this year. The company now has about 1,700 employees and has added more than 1,000 employees in the past nine months.
OpenAI's chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, said that the company will provide liquidity to employees after financing, but the specific details have not been determined.
Friar said in a statement: Every week, more than 250 million people use ChatGPT, and whether it's breaking language barriers or solving the toughest research problems, ChatGPT can handle it with ease.