Last updated on January 16th, 2023 at 07:49 pm
OpenAI Inc., the company that made the AI-powered chatbot tool ChatGPT, is the target of a tender offer from investors that could bring its value up to $29 billion.
According to a source, Founders Fund and Thrive Capital, two venture capital firms, are in discussions to invest in the hot startup in a deal that would see them buy shares from current OpenAI shareholders, including its staff.
If the deal goes through, OpenAI’s prior valuation of $14 billion, established following its most recent tender offer in 2021, would more than treble.
With the release of its popular chatbot tool ChatGPT in the latter part of last year, OpenAI recently attracted the public’s attention.
The chatbot can give a smart, human-like answer to almost any question, even tricky ones like “explain a dispute between two students about the value of education.”
According to a tweet from Chief Executive Sam Altman, ChatGPT had more than a million users within a few days of its launch on Nov. 30.
Industry experts say that ChatGPT is such a big step forward in technology that it could one day compete with Google LLC as an alternative to Google Search, even though Altman has said that it still has bugs.
DALL-E:
OpenAI also has a project called DALL-E, which is an AI-powered image-making tool that has shown human-level artistic talent by making some amazing pictures based on people’s written descriptions.
The company started up in 2015 as a non-profit with the goal of making AI research better for everyone.
In 2019, OpenAI started a business that makes money to get more money for the processing power its algorithms need to learn.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc., Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn Corp., and David Altman, former president of well-known venture capital firm Y Combinator, were among its first backers.
But since then, most of the money OpenAI has raised has come from Microsoft Corp., a company with which the organization has built a close relationship.
Read: 8 AI Applications That are Part of Our Daily Life
ChatGPT:
Rob Enderle, an analyst for ChatGPT, says that Microsoft plans to aggressively add ChatGPT to new products, such as its Bing search engine.
ChatGPT is currently regarded as the industry leader in conversational AI.
Enderle thought that ChatGPT would completely change the way we use computers, especially when searching the internet.
This updated and higher value shows how quickly the technology has become popular and how much Microsoft cares about it.
Investors are now very interested in it, and it could change the way people use computers in big ways in the future.
The interesting thing is that, even though the goal of $29 billion seems high given that it was once estimated to be worth less than half that amount, it may be a reasonable estimate given how much interest its technology has generated.
Academics call the goal of OpenAI’s technology “artificial general intelligence,” which means that AI will be able to fully mimic human intelligence, creativity, and thoughtfulness.
In a December interview with the Journal, Altman claimed that OpenAI’s tools might have a similarly transformational impact on society as the smartphone did.
He thinks that AI can be used to find answers to some of the most important problems scientists are facing right now.
But if OpenAI wants to get there, it obviously needs additional funding.
According to Reuters, the company claims to be making “tens of millions of dollars” in revenue and thinks it will reach $1 billion in annual revenue by 2024.
Altman has also claimed that OpenAI does not plan to go public or be purchased.
According to Constellation Research Inc.’s Holger Mueller, “ChatGPT has really opened people’s eyes to how far AI has progressed.”
It’s gotten to the point where it’s unclear if a person or an AI did the work. Therefore, it is not surprising that early-stage investors have been interested in this.
The only practical option for investors to get on the ChatGPT AI bandwagon early is through a tender offer because OpenAI is a problematic case because it doesn’t want to go public.
Investors in OpenAI can only get out of the business by selling their shares to other people. This is why the tender offer is necessary.
Investors in OpenAI, however, have a reason not to sell.
The Journal claims that investors in the company are only allowed to make about 20 times their initial investment in profits.
Related: Role of AI in Future Industries
