ChatGPT Creator OpenAI Valued at $29B
ChatGPT creator OpenAI is reportedly considering a tender offer that would value it at $29 billion.
The company is in talks with venture capital (VC) firms for a deal that would include $300 million in share sales, but no final agreement has been reached, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Thursday (Jan. 5), citing unnamed sources.
Such a deal would double the market valuation of OpenAI from the $14 billion it achieved in a tender offer in 2021, according to the report.
In addition, Microsoft has been in talks with OpenAI to increase its existing investment in the firm, the report said.
An OpenAI spokesperson told PYMNTS via email that the company is not commenting on the report.
Microsoft invested $1 billion into the venture in 2019 and became OpenAI’s exclusive cloud computing partner.
Three years later, Reuters reported Dec. 15 that OpenAI said in a pitch to investors that it anticipates the company will generate $1 billion in revenue by 2024.
This report comes as the company has enjoyed great exposure in recent weeks with its now-famous chatbot.
As PYMNTS reported Dec. 15, OpenAI has become widely known for its product ChatGPT, a chatbot with humanlike conversation capabilities that can, according to the company, “answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.”
The product has taken social media by storm and helped put artificial intelligence (AI) in the headlines once more as consumers flock to play with its humanlike conversation capabilities.
When OpenAI and Microsoft announced their partnership in 2019, the companies said they were collaborating on “shared principles on ethics and trust” and would be working on problems that regular AI can’t tackle.
“Modern AI systems work well for the specific problem on which they’ve been trained, but getting AI systems to help address some of the hardest problems facing the world today will require generalization and deep mastery of multiple AI technologies,” the two companies wrote at the time in a press release. “OpenAI and Microsoft’s vision is for artificial general intelligence to work with people to help solve currently intractable multidisciplinary problems, including global challenges such as climate change, more personalized healthcare and education.”