OpenAI is in talks to possibly sell shares in a move that would increase the company's valuation from $29.000 billion to between $80.000 billion and $90.000 billion, according to informs Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with the conversations.
In April of 2023, OpenAI raised just over $300 million in funding from backers including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive and K2 Global at a valuation of $29 billion. This was separate from a large investment from Microsoft announced earlier this year, which closed in January. The size of Microsoft's investment was believed to be around $10.000 billion.
OpenAI, ChatGPT's wildly popular generative AI, has been one of the biggest technological success stories of recent times since its debut about nine months ago, allowing anyone to generate essays, poems, and summaries from simple prompts based in text. This week it was also announced that ChatGPT is about to become much more interactive, with users also able to have a voice conversation with the chatbot.
The artificial intelligence company, which is 49% owned by Microsoft, said in late August that it expected reach $XNUMX billion in revenue in 2023.
According to the Wall Street Journal, employees would be allowed to sell their existing shares rather than the company issuing new ones.
