Sam Altman’s OpenAI has reportedly held talks with private investors about raising money at an eye-popping $750 billion valuation – a move that comes amid rumblings that the artificial intelligence giant is also considering going public.
The company best known for creating ChatGPT is looking to raise tens of billions of dollars in the fundraising round – potentially as much as $100 billion, The Information reported. The talks were said to be preliminary and subject to change.
If the round proceeds, it would mark a 50% jump in OpenAI’s valuation compared to October, when the company allowed current and former employees to sell $6.6 billion shares at a $500 billion valuation.
The Post has reached out to OpenAI for comment.
In October, Reuters reported that OpenAI was “laying the groundwork” for an initial public offering and was considering submitting the necessary filings with regulators by the second half of next year. The potential IPO could value OpenAI at $1 trillion, sources told the outlet.
“An IPO is not our focus, so we could not possibly have set a date,” an OpenAI spokesperson said at the time. “We are building a durable business and advancing our mission so everyone benefits from AGI.”
Elsewhere, Amazon is said to be in talks to potentially invest at least $10 billion in OpenAI and sell the company its computer chips, Bloomberg reported earlier this week.
While ChatGPT has a massive base of more than 800 million weekly active users, it has yet to turn a profit.
Additionally, Altman’s plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars to build out data centers and other infrastructure required to train more advanced AI models have spooked Wall Street and sparked discussions about whether the market is in the midst of a tech bubble.
Altman recently declared a “code red” at OpenAI and told employees to focus on improving ChatGPT’s performance due to concerns that Google and other rivals were gaining ground.
