- OpenAI raised $6.6 billion in a deal that values ​​the company at more than $150 billion.
- Investors include Nvidia, Thrive Capital, and an investment firm backed by the United Arab Emirates.
- Also among the backers are SoftBank, Tiger, and Ark, which has a track record of investing high.
OpenAI has officially closed a historic funding round. The company raised $6.6 billion in a deal that valued the company at more than $150 billion and brought in several high-profile investors, including Nvidia, Thrive Capital, and MGX, an investment firm backed by the United Arab Emirates.
Other companies that participated in this round are known less for their business acumen and more for being some of Silicon Valley’s most bubble busters.
Among them was SoftBank, which is famous poured $18.5 billion into WeWorksupporting its founder Adam Neuman to the end, even when he left the company in dire straits and raised more than $1 billion coming out.
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, known for his unique style of hip investing, is said to have he told Neuman that he “wasn’t crazy enough.” SoftBank has a history of big bets that never paid off, such as the robotic pizza maker, Zume, that chewed up. 445 million dollars before bankruptcy. SoftBank Vision Fund great loss in 2023 and, more recently, it has been sell or write down propertyreduce staff, and slow down its pace of new investment.
Tiger Global is also one of the companies that supported by OpenAI in this latest round of funding. In 2021, the company led the charge for so-called crossover funds, a group of investors who flooded Silicon Valley with Wall Street moneycreating chaos and pushing startup counts to unsustainable levels. But that strategy backfired when valuations fell in 2022, leaving money stretched by painful loss.
A partner at a venture capital firm told Business Insider the OpenAI “funding appears to be in 2021,” referring to VC interest from that year that generated a large number of overvalued deals.
Cathie Wood’s Ark Venture Fund is doubling down on its investment in ChatGPT developer, as first reported by BI. The ark has the shameful distinction of being a serious destroyer of property of a decade ago, to lose more than 14 billion dollars with its moonshot bets on everything from genomics to cryptocurrency, according to Morningstar.
You’d be forgiven for wondering if these investors’ proven track record of getting in at the top is a bad indicator of OpenAI’s ability to grow to its incredible valuation. The company, which two years ago was an unknown research group, is now valued like Goldman Sachs or AT&T.
Notably absent from OpenAI’s list of investors was Apple, which it is said to have he abandoned the plan at 11. This comes just a few months after the two companies announced a partnership integrating OpenAI technology on Apple devices. One can’t help but wonder why Apple CEO Tim Cook would be willing to put ChatGPT in the hands of Apple’s billions of users but not want to invest in the company that develops it.
Cook has developed a reputation in Silicon Valley as a staunch and reliable fighter for Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his ilk. Apple’s inclusion in OpenAI’s funding round may have gone a long way in allaying doubts about OpenAI. Palace intrigue and a general state of chaos.
A few weeks ago, this funding round was being talked about as the arrival of the adults in the room. Looks like they probably ended up with some rowdy guys instead.