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OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, continues to attract investor interest. In October, it announced a $6.6 billion fundraising round, at a valuation of $157 billion. And this week, we learned that a major investor is ready to invest up to $25 billion. Citing a source familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reports that Japanese giant SoftBank Group is already in discussions for an investment of $15 billion to $25 billion in OpenAI. These billions would be in addition to the $15 billion that SoftBank has committed to injecting into Stargate, a vast AI infrastructure project in the United States.
As usual, caution is still required, since this information has not been confirmed. However, it should be noted that SoftBank Group has recently increased its investments in the artificial intelligence sector. Otherwise, this large investment would make SoftBank the largest investor in OpenAI, ahead of Microsoft. The valuation of OpenAI, which is already one of the most highly valued startups in the world, could also explode if the news is made official.
OpenAI: a new structure more attractive to investors?
In any case, this rumor is circulating as, at the end of the year, OpenAI announced plans to change its structure, to attract even more investment. The for-profit arm of OpenAI will be transformed into a Public Benefit Corporation registered in Delaware, with common stock. The non-profit arm will still exist, and will hold shares in the new company.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000“The hundreds of billions of dollars that large companies are investing today in the development of AI show what it will really take for OpenAI to continue to pursue its mission. Once again, we need to raise more capital than we had imagined. Investors want to support us, but, at this level of capital, they need conventional equity and less structural importance”, OpenAI justified in announcing the project.
Does OpenAI still need so much money ?
In the meantime, the DeepSeek storm has arrived. This Chinese AI rivals ChatGPT, but was developed with limited resources, compared to those of OpenAI. As a result, we are now wondering whether the billions of dollars invested by American companies in the race for artificial intelligence are really necessary. This is, for example, why the arrival of DeepSeek caused a drop in the value of Nvidia shares, the specialist in chips dedicated to artificial intelligence.
However, in a reaction on the social network X, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, indicated that it is more important than ever to have significant computing power. “The world is going to want to use a LOT of AI,” he wrote. Yann LeCunn, chief scientist at Meta Group’s AI division, also cited a “major misunderstanding about investing in AI infrastructure.” According to him, much of the billions invested are going into inference (generating content) and not into training AI. “Running AI assistant services for billions of people is computationally intensive,”, he added.
- SoftBank is reportedly in talks to invest up to $25 billion in OpenAI
- For now, it's just a rumor, but such an investment would boost the valuation of the creator of ChatGPT
- OpenAI is considering changing its structure to be more attractive for investment
- Even though DeepSeek has demonstrated that high-performance AI can be trained with relatively little resources, the computing power is still needed to bring the technology to billions of users
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