OpenAI Inc., the startup behind artificial intelligence-powered chatbot tool ChatGPT, has been the subject of a tender offer from investors.
Venture capitalist firms Founders Fund and Thrive Capital are in talks to invest in the red-hot startup, according to a Wall Street Journal report today. will purchase shares from If the deal goes ahead, it will more than double his previous OpenAI valuation of $14 billion, set after the latest tender offer in 2021.
OpenAI captured the public’s imagination with the launch of ChatGPT, a viral chatbot tool, late last year. Chatbots provide intelligent, human-like responses to almost any type of question, even complex ones like “explain a debate between her two students about the value of education.” can return.
According to a tweet by CEO Sam Altman (pictured), ChatGPT has gained more than 1 million users within days of its November 30th launch. Industry watchers argue that ChatGPT is such a big technological breakthrough that it could one day even rival Google LLC as an alternative to Google Search, but Altman previously said ChatGPT was still suffering from glitches. I admitted that I was there.
OpenAI is also behind DALL-E, an AI-powered image generation tool that has demonstrated human-level artistic talent, creating stunning images based on people’s text-based descriptions.
The startup was founded as a non-profit in 2015 with a mission to pursue AI research for the benefit of humanity. OpenAI established a for-profit division in 2019 to raise more money to pay for the computing power needed to train its algorithms.
The company’s initial backers included Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk and LinkedIn. Corp. co-founder Reed Hoffman and Altman, former president of his high-profile venture capital firm Y Combinator. However, most of the funding OpenAI has raised since then has come from Microsoft Corp., a company closely associated with OpenAI.
Analyst Rob Enderle told SiliconANGLE that ChatGPT is currently considered the state-of-the-art technology in terms of conversational AI, and Microsoft will leverage it heavily in future products, including the Bing search engine. said he was planning to
“ChatGPT is going to revolutionize the way we interface with computers, especially internet searches,” said Enderle. “This updated valuation increase reflects Microsoft’s interest and also shows that this technology has suddenly become visible. It has become highly desired by investors and It could be an even more important game-changer for future human-computer interactions.Interestingly, the $29 billion target seems extreme, considering the previous valuation was less than half of that. And this number may actually be a conservative estimate given the huge growing interest in the technology.”
According to OpenAI, its ultimate goal is to achieve what researchers call “artificial intelligence,” a state in which AI can fully mirror human intellect, creativity, and thoughtfulness. Altman said in his December interview with the Journal that OpenAI’s tools, like smartphones, have the potential to transform society. He believes AI can be used to come up with solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing the scientific community today.
In the meantime, though, OpenAI clearly needs more funding if it wants to get there. The company claims to generate “tens of millions of dollars” in revenue, with annual revenue expected to reach $1 billion by 2024, Reuters previously reported. However, Altman also said OpenAI intends to avoid public offerings or acquisitions.
Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said: So it’s no surprise that this caught the eye of early entrants. However, this is a tricky case because OpenAI does not want to go public. As such, a tender offer is the most viable way for investors to jump on the ChatGPT AI bandwagon early. ”
A tender offer is necessary because OpenAI investors can only cash out of the company through a secondary stock sale. However, OpenAI investors have an incentive not to sell. Investors in the company are limited to a return of about 20 times their original investment, according to the Journal, but the longer they wait to sell their shares, the greater the return they can make.
