Last week when OpenAI’s ‘for profit’ restructuring move was revealed, three senior executives abruptly announced they were departing, including Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, VP Research Barret Zoph, and Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew. Meanwhile, Reuters (again citing sources) reported that OpenAI has asked its investors to refrain from funding five companies it perceives as close competitors. This latest funding round values the company at a staggering $157 billion, making OpenAI one of the most valuable private companies in the world. The company announced that it has raised $6.6 billion (£5.03 billion) from new investor Nvidia, as well as returning investors Microsoft and venture capital firms Thrive Capital and Khosla Ventures. A third co-founder, chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, left OpenAI in May and started his own AI company called Safe Superintelligence Inc (SSI). As part of the funding round, investors have reportedly secured some protections that would allow them to claw back their capital or renegotiate the valuation if the restructuring changes are not implemented within two years. Reuters, citing sources, reported that OpenAI is on pace to generate $3.6 billion in revenue this year on mounting losses of over $5 billion. These competitors include OpenAI’s co-founder Ilya Sutskever’s new firm SSI; Anthropic; Elon Musk’s xAI; and AI search startup Perplexity and enterprise search firm Glean. In August, OpenAI co-founder John Schulman had tweeted on X that he had joined rival AI company Anthropic AI. “We’ve raised $6.6B in new funding at a $157B post-money valuation to accelerate progress on our mission,” said OpenAI. OpenAI has closed its mammoth funding round that has seen significant investments from returning backers. It is also understood that Altimeter Capital, Fidelity, SoftBank, and Abu Dhabi’s state-backed investment firm MGX participated in the funding round. The funding will welcome news for CEO Sam Altman, who is contending with major changes at the AI startup. OpenAI chief technical officer Mira Murati.
This Cyber News was published on www.silicon.co.uk. Publication date: Thu, 03 Oct 2024 10:43:06 +0000