In December 2023, OpenAI was on the steady path to a $100 valuation. Less than a year later, the AI behemoth sits on a $157 empire that aims to push the bounds of AI research and computing. In a record-breaking funding round, OpenAI raised $6.6 billion piggybacked off OpenAI’s recent valuation.
In a press release published on Wednesday, OpenAI provided highlights from the funding round led by Thrive Capital and backed by Microsoft, Nvidia, SoftBank, and several others. With the influx of fresh funds in OpenAI’s well-oiled AI ecosystem, the company will “double down on leadership in frontier AI research, increase compute capacity, and continue building tools that help people solve hard problems,” as penned in a blog post on Wednesday.
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OpenAI’s record-breaking growth story
OpenAI shot to fame in late 2022 after the global success of its AI chatbot, ChatGPT. With ChatGPT, Sam Altman brought the sci-fi dream of generative AI to the masses and engineered a revenue stream that knows no bounds. Nearly two years later, OpenAI has become a household name and industry standard for all realms of generative AI innovation.
In 2023, the not-for-profit AI company was worth $29 billion. In early 2024, this figure nearly tripled with a renewed valuation of $80 billion. With more than 250 million active ChatGPT users across the globe, CFO Sarah Friar exclaims enthusiastically, “This is just the start.”
“AI is already personalizing learning, accelerating healthcare breakthroughs, and driving productivity,” Friar said in the statement.
However, the path to the top of an evolving tech pyramid is a tricky one. In 2024, OpenAI suffered a slew of personnel losses. Most recently, former CTO Mira Murati announced her departure from the soon-to-be for-profit AI giant. Her exit from OpenAI was preceded by chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and co-lead Jan Leike’s exit earlier this year. The list of executives that signed off from OpenAI is an exhaustive one, with Greg Brockman sitting at its helm with his “sabbatical” from the AI giant’s AGI mission.
I shared the following note with the OpenAI team today. pic.twitter.com/nsZ4khI06P
— Mira Murati (@miramurati) September 25, 2024
In an interview at Italian Tech Week, Sam Altman alluded to the executive departures from OpenAI’s core team: “I think this will be hopefully a great transition for everyone involved, and I hope OpenAI will be stronger for it, as we are for all of our transitions.”
We’re releasing a new iteration of SWE-bench, in collaboration with the original authors, to more reliably evaluate AI models on their ability to solve real-world software issues. https://t.co/qJuLpCdSWJ
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) August 13, 2024
With $6.6 billion, OpenAI intends to explore GenAI advancements in healthcare, education, and productivity. Its well-oiled AI machine will make bigger waves in the AI space. The talent it will lose as collateral will remain a mystery to everyone, even to its shrinking boardroom.
