OpenAI reaches $2 billion in annualized revenue
9 February 2024
19 February 2024
The New York Times reported Friday that OpenAI has completed a deal that values the artificial intelligence company at $80 billion or more. As part of the deal, the company will allow employees to sell their shares at very high prices to VC firm Thrive Capital and other investors. OpenAI is now one of the most valuable tech start-ups in the world, right behind ByteDance and SpaceX.
The current valuation represents a significant increase from the previous year, when OpenAI participated in a similar transaction and sold stakes to Thrive Capital, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and K2 Global. This deal valued OpenAI at approximately $29 billion.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is also reportedly seeking to raise trillions of dollars to transform the chip and AI business and is in talks with investors, including the United Arab Emirates government. The initiative aims to increase global chip manufacturing capacity, expand AI capabilities and more. Altman is reportedly seeking $5 trillion to $7 trillion in capital to cover everything from providing power for data centers to chip manufacturing over the next few years. As part of the discussions, Altman proposes a collaboration involving OpenAI, various investors, chipmakers and energy suppliers.
OpenAI also recently introduced its latest tool, Sora, which allows users to generate videos from text input. Although the Sora tool is not yet publicly available, it has gained the attention of industry analysts due to the high quality of the videos it produces.