The American company OpenAI, which launched ChatGPT at the end of last year, is negotiating with investors to sell its shares with a total valuation of the company at $86 billion. This is approximately three times higher than their value six months ago. About it writes Financial Times.
The company was valued at $29 billion in April this year when it raised money from investors including Microsoft and Thrive Capital. The fact that OpenAI is seeking a valuation of $80-90 billion was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Bloomberg reported that the company had narrowed that range to $86 billion.
OpenAI has been discussing a tender offer with existing investors to allow employees to sell their shares, people familiar with the discussions said. They suggest that the total offer amount is likely to be significantly less as employees choose to keep the papers.
It is unclear whether the share sale will be open to new investors as well as existing ones. These include well-known venture funds such as Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures. A knowledgeable source claims that Thrive Capital will also participate in the new deal. OpenAI declined to comment.
As the publication explains, offering employee shares to investors through a tender offer is a way to allow employees to profit from the company’s success. It is also expected to help OpenAI compete with other startups and more established companies, including Google and Amazon.
OpenAI develops and licenses technologies based on machine learning. She is the developer of the popular chatbot ChatGPT.
Two months after the release of the new pre-trained generative model ChatGPT-4 in March 2023, the number of its active users reached 100 million people, which was a historical record for growth rate. Technology companies, in turn, have refocused their teams’ resources on building their own generative models. Russian companies also did not stand aside: Sber developed GigaChat, andYandexยป YandexGPT.
