Nandini Roy Choudhury, writer
Brief news
- Tiger Global plans to invest in OpenAI’s new funding round, potentially valuing the startup over $150 billion, led by Thrive Capital’s $1 billion investment.
- Major tech companies, including Microsoft, Nvidia, and Apple, are also in talks to participate in the funding.
- OpenAI’s valuation has surged from $29 billion to $80 billion, driven by rapid growth and new product launches, including ChatGPT.
Detailed news
The round is being led by Thrive Capital, which intends to invest $1 billion. It is also reported that Microsoft, Nvidia, and Apple are in discussions to become involved.
Tiger Global, a New York-based company, has been a significant investor in technology firms and later-stage companies for at least 15 years. This investment history dates back to its pre-IPO investments in LinkedIn and Facebook. In recent years, the organization has made investments in other rapidly expanding AI companies, such as Scale AI and Cohere. It acquired shares in OpenAI for the first time in 2021.
Tiger’s intended participation was initially disclosed by The Information.
Earlier this year, OpenAI was reported to be valued at $80 billion, a significant increase from $29 billion the previous year. Earlier this year, it was reported that the annualized revenue exceeded $2 billion.
In late 2022, the company’s growth surged following the introduction of its ChatGPT automaton. New OpenAI products for businesses and an expansion into AI-generated photos and videos have maintained that momentum. According to OpenAI, the company has increased its weekly active user base from 100 million in late 2018 to 200 million.
The news is announced one day after OpenAI released o1, a preview of its new AI model that is focused on “solving hard problems” and reasoning. It also follows the White House meeting, where OpenAI CEO Sam Altman participated in a discussion on the future of artificial intelligence energy infrastructure in the United States with leaders from Anthropic, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and several American power and utility companies.
The group also discussed the possibility of convening the public and private sectors to discuss the energy consumption, data center capacity, semiconductor manufacturing, and grid capacity of AI, according to sources who were present at the meeting, as reported by CNBC.
Source : CNBC News
