(San Francisco) OpenAI announced on Wednesday that it had completed a major fundraising of $6.6 billion, which valued it at $157 billion, reinforcing the status of the creator of ChatGPT as a star of Silicon Valley and a key player in intelligence generative artificial (AI).
“Every week, more than 250 million people around the world use ChatGPT to improve their work, creativity and education,” the company said in a brief statement.
Venture capital firm Thrive Capital confirmed it led the funding round.
Various names of potential investors have been circulating in the American press for weeks, including Microsoft, which has already injected $13 billion into the start-up, and the giant Nvidia, another leader in generative AI thanks to its ultra-sophisticated chips designed especially for new technology.
According to the Wall Street JournalApple, which already uses OpenAI models in its new generative AI system, recently withdrew from negotiations to participate in the financing.
OpenAI launched the wave of generative AI (production of content on a simple query in everyday language) at the end of 2022 with its ChatGPT interface, which has become synonymous with this new type of service.
Since then, from Microsoft to Google and Meta (Facebook, Instagram), all the major technology groups have competed with each other with tools intended to help humans on a daily basis, from writing messages to education and artistic creation.
Departures
This fundraising makes OpenAI one of the three largest unlisted start-ups in the world, according to Bloomberg, alongside SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space exploration group and Chinese entertainment giant ByteDance, owner of the TikTok application.
The major step for the company, still confidential two years ago, comes after a year marked by the launch of new innovative AI models, but also by numerous controversies.
Last November, the board of directors fired Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI, accusing him of a lack of transparency and attention to security issues.
He was reinstated in his role at the head of the start-up after a few days, supported by the overwhelming majority of employees and the main investor, Microsoft.
But since then, there has been a succession of departures at the top. In May, co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever left the group, as did Jan Leike, responsible for managing risks associated with generative AI.
Then another co-founder, John Schulman, also disappeared, while the president, Greg Brockman, went on leave. And Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer, resigned last week, remaining vague about her reasons.
“Humanity”
According to Bloomberg, the start-up could change its status, to place more emphasis on generating profits, without losing sight of its objective of benefiting society from its scientific advances.
Founded in 2015, it has status as a non-profit organization, and is supposed to work for the good of humanity.
In mid-September, OpenAI launched o1, a new kind of AI model, capable of reasoning and answering more complex questions, particularly mathematical ones, thus hoping to reduce the risk of hallucinations (absurd, incoherent or factually incorrect answers). false).
OpenAI is thus progressing towards its objective of developing “general” AI, that is to say artificial intelligence similar to that of humans.
“We are progressing in our mission, which is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity,” assured the start-up in its press release on Wednesday.