San Francisco (United States) (AFP) – OpenAI on Tuesday said that the startup was valued at $852 billion in a freshly closed funding round that raised $122 billion. The eye-watering level of funding came in higher than originally projected, reflecting the surging costs of computing power and arriving amid lingering questions about whether OpenAI and other AI companies can generate sufficient revenue to cover expenses.
“The capital being deployed today is helping build the infrastructure layer for intelligence itself,” OpenAI said in a blog post. “Over time, that value will flow back into the economy, to companies, to communities, and increasingly to individuals.” The ChatGPT-maker said that its revenue rate of $2 billion monthly is quickly growing. The funding round included a diverse set of partners including Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Softbank, according to OpenAI. In an unusual move, some $3 billion was reportedly raised from individual investors.
ChatGPT claims the top position in consumer AI, with more than 900 million weekly active users and some 50 million subscribers. Use of ChatGPT’s online search engine has tripled over the course of a year, according to OpenAI. “These are not just growth milestones — they show that frontier AI is becoming part of everyday life for people around the world,” the San Francisco-based startup said in the post.
The company in February began rolling out advertising for its non-premium users in a bid to bring in more revenue. OpenAI also announced that it is building a “superapp” that will combine ChatGPT, internet browsing, a Codex coding tool, and agentic capabilities that allow digital assistants to independently tend to tasks.
The massive funding round comes with anticipation that OpenAI is planning to become a publicly traded company this year as competition intensifies in the AI sector. Arch-rival Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI employees, continues to gain ground and grab headlines for its well-regarded Claude AI models. Anthropic earlier this year secured a $30 billion funding round. Google’s AI model Gemini has emerged as another potent competitor, with Elon Musk’s xAI also attracting investment and users.
© 2024 AFP
