OpenAI isn’t going anywhere: raises $6.6B at $157B valuation

Regardless of a wave of govt departures in current months, OpenAI has at this time announced an expected new funding round.

It was all the time anticipated to be a whopper, however the quantity it raised — $6.6 billion at a $157 billion complete firm valuation  — now makes it the biggest enterprise capital spherical in historical past thus far, based on Axios.

The spherical was led by Thrive Capital, based on Bloomberg, whereas CNBC notes that heavy hitters together with Nvidia and Microsoft plowed extra cash into this spherical as properly.

In saying the funding on its website, OpenAI famous that ChatGPT alone counts greater than 250 million weekly distinctive customers.

“The brand new funding will enable us to double down on our management in frontier AI analysis, enhance compute capability, and proceed constructing instruments that assist folks clear up exhausting issues,” the corporate wrote in a short blog post.

Causes for skepticism?

Nonetheless, the information was nonetheless greeted with skepticism amongst AI critics together with the outspoken tech public relations skilled and tech author Ed Zitron, who’s newest publication is headlined “OpenAI is a bad business” and argues that OpenAI’s resolution to take a reported $500 million from the notorious Softbank Enterprise Fund — which has notably invested in duds like WeWork — mixed with its reliance on particular person ChatGPT subscriptions slightly than API utilization or licensing, suggests it isn’t properly positioned to succeed as a for-profit sooner or later.

These are, in my view, truthful criticisms, as is noting the truth that Apple reportedly declined to invest within the agency after giving it consideration and doubtlessly within the wake of former chief expertise officer Mira Murati’s resignation simply final week.

After which there got here the report from The Financial Times that OpenAI made a part of the situations of those that had been throwing cash its means that they not spend money on rivals together with Anthropic, which was based by former OpenAI researchers and continues to pick up more exiting execs, and Musk’s xAI — lately reported to have switched on its Memphis training supercluster “Colossus” with 100,000+ Nvidia H100 GPUs — seemingly displaying that OpenAI is frightened concerning the competitors catching up.

Musk, for his half, took the information of OpenAI’s reported situations on unique funding along with his typical blunt criticism, calling the corporate evil on his X account.

And certainly, the competitors within the AI area is intensifying with extra, newer fashions rising equivalent to Liquid AI’s new non-transformer primarily based Liquid Basis Fashions (LFMs), and Google and Anthropic additionally fielding compelling enterprise and consumer-facing choices. In the meantime, Meta and Alibaba are releasing highly effective open supply fashions without spending a dime.

The OpenAI bull case

Nonetheless, OpenAI’s fashions high the charts on the subject of the third-party efficiency benchmarks, and each time they’ve been overtaken, OpenAI has launched an replace or total new class of fashions such because the o1 preview collection that retakes the throne.

So for now, fueled by $6.6 billion in recent funding and with new fashions, developer instruments, and aggressive value slicing measures for developer clients (intelligence that’s “too low-cost to meter” within the phrases of many within the AI {industry}) — it seems that OpenAI just isn’t going anyplace anytime quickly. It could, actually, be too big to fail, as I speculated it was changing into just a few weeks in the past.

For builders constructing merchandise atop the corporate’s AI fashions and frameworks, that is in all probability welcome information — as they’re prone to steady and supported going ahead.

Will OpenAI give GPT creators any extra $$$?

Nonetheless, one huge query stays relating to OpenAI’s customized GPT Retailer, its model of a form of AI app retailer which launched in January 2024 and permits any ChatGPT Plus consumer to create and share customized variations of ChatGPT designed to meet particular roles and carry out particular duties.

OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman said at its developer conference DevDay in late 2023 that income sharing can be coming, and a few customers reported that they did obtain some income from their GPTs, however we haven’t heard a lot from OpenAI about it since.

Now flush with money, I’m questioning if OpenAI will begin paying out extra to extra GPT creators (selfishly as properly, since I’ve created just a few customized GPTs — full disclosure). I’ve reached out to the corporate to ask about that an will replace after I hear again.

Both means, OpenAI’s coffers have been refilled, and regardless of the chaos behind the scenes, the corporate continues to ship new AI merchandise frequently — although we’re all nonetheless ready on the general public launch of its AI video mannequin Sora.