Thought Leadership
The ChatGPT developer OpenAI has secured 40 billion dollars from investors for further growth. The unprecedented financial injection brings the total valuation to 300 billion dollars, as OpenAI announced.
Among other things, the money will be used to expand the computer infrastructure and advance research into artificial intelligence.
OpenAI also announced that ChatGPT is used by 500 million people every week. The chatbot is the best-known AI program and triggered the hype surrounding artificial intelligence when it was released more than two years ago. There are now more rivals, such as Claude from the company Anthropic or Grok from Elon Musk’s xAI.
OpenAI conversion as a prerequisite
The financing round was led by the Japanese technology group Softbank. According to information from the financial service Bloomberg, OpenAI will initially receive 7.5 billion dollars from Softbank and 2.5 billion dollars from a group of investors.
The prerequisite for the payment of the remaining 30 billion is that OpenAI completes its transformation into a profit-oriented company by the end of the year as planned, according to an informed person. The company is currently controlled by a non-profit organization. Tech billionaire Musk, once a co-founder of OpenAI, wants to prevent the conversion and has taken the company to court.
Money for “Stargate” project
If the conversion fails, Softbank could reduce its planned total investment from 30 to 20 billion dollars, Bloomberg wrote. According to media reports, part of the cash injection will be used for the AI computer project “Stargate”, which was announced by US President Donald Trump in the White House with a total investment of 500 billion dollars.
dpa
