OpenAI has just announced three new capabilities of ChatGPT, "see, listen, and speak," achieving a leap in multimodal capabilities. This seems to be a prelude to today's big news - OpenAI plans to sell stocks, with a valuation reaching nearly $90 billion.

By Kyle

With three months left until the end of 2023, OpenAI's valuation has already tripled earlier this year. In April, OpenAI raised over $3 billion in funding from supporters such as Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive, and K2 Global, with a valuation of $29 billion.

According to the latest news today, OpenAI is in discussions with investors for stock sales, and the valuation of this hottest AI startup has reached between $80 billion and $90 billion.

Insiders say that OpenAI, in which Microsoft holds a 49% stake, has informed investors that the company is expected to generate $1 billion in revenue this year and create tens of billions of dollars in revenue in 2024.

The discussed stock transaction is expected to allow employees to sell existing stocks, rather than the company issuing new stocks to raise additional funds, which is a common way to help employees sell stocks without going public. SpaceX and other mature startups regularly conduct private stock sales without going public, allowing employees and existing investors to profit from the increasing value of the company's equity. When selling existing shares, no new funds will be raised for the company.

Insiders say that OpenAI has already started pitching the deal to investors, but the terms may change.

OpenAI raised $10 billion in primary funding from Microsoft this year to develop new products and fund AI model training.

OpenAI released ChatGPT in November last year, igniting the current global frenzy for generative AI.

With a valuation of over $80 billion, OpenAI will become one of the world's most valuable startups, second only to Elon Musk's SpaceX and ByteDance. This figure highlights the extent to which OpenAI is able to reshape the landscape of Silicon Valley and force richer, more mature tech giants to completely change their product roadmaps and follow its lead.

Google is catching up by developing products similar to ChatGPT and is currently preparing to launch its most powerful large model, Gemini, to compete with OpenAI's advanced large language model GPT-4.

Meta is developing an open-source model with hopes that it will have similar functionality. As the AI competition heats up, tech companies have to allocate more resources to new product development.

OpenAI's goal is to sell hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of existing stocks to Silicon Valley investors. In the past, venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital and Khosla Ventures have bought OpenAI stocks through tender offers, although most of its external funding comes from Microsoft.

This transaction will immediately bring huge book profits to Microsoft. In January, Microsoft invested billions of dollars in this startup to fund the intensive computing costs required for training its advanced AI models.

Although OpenAI was founded in 2015, this company led by Sam Altman did not start generating substantial revenue until after the release of ChatGPT, and its rapid growth demonstrates the speed at which some companies are embracing generative AI products.

This employee stock sale can set a minimum price for any such additional financing from external investors. It is widely expected that OpenAI will raise more funds by issuing new shares as it tries to keep up with the computing costs required for developing and maintaining its AI systems.

Insiders say that Altman has already attracted strong interest from investment giants such as SoftBank, which is owned by Masayoshi Son. Raising funds will involve selling new shares and will be separate from the ongoing tender offer process.

Although OpenAI was initially a research-oriented nonprofit organization, supported by Musk and other investors, dedicated to building safe AI technology, in 2019, it shifted to a "profit cap" structure so that it could accept billions of dollars in investment for computing power and hire top AI talent from tech giants like Google.

OpenAI's transition to a for-profit company has sparked strong opposition from a large number of early safety researchers at OpenAI, who are concerned that this change will prioritize profits over the development of secure technology. Some of these researchers eventually left and founded a competitor called Anthropic, which this week signed a $4 billion investment deal with Amazon.

Altman played a key role in the global discussion on how to regulate AI. He is one of the many technology leaders dedicated to building so-called Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), a computer system that can rival human intelligence and reasoning.

At a hearing in May, he called on Congress to establish licensing and safety standards for advanced AI systems, which drew criticism from other entrepreneurs who believe that these standards will only solidify the position of existing companies like OpenAI.

Altman stated that he does not intend to take OpenAI public or sell it to a buyer, meaning that the routine sale of existing stocks is an important way for employees to cash out their stocks.

Insiders say that OpenAI intends for Microsoft to hold a minority stake in the company, meaning that this tech giant may not be able to purchase any stocks offered in a financing that would push its ownership above 50%.

OpenAI now wants to sell stocks with a valuation of $90 billion, and it remains to be seen whether investors will buy in. The current competition in generative AI has intensified. Tech giants (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta) are beginning to focus on large models, with substantial resources backing their large model products as they narrow the gap with ChatGPT. In addition, their competitor Anthropic has received $4 billion in support from Amazon. The pressure on OpenAI from competition is evident. How much advantage does OpenAI have left?

OpenAI has recently launched ChatGPT Enterprise Edition and will soon introduce voice and image capabilities, but can it really achieve its revenue target of $1 billion this year and tens of billions of dollars next year?

Reference:

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-seeks-new-valuation-of-up-to-90-billion-in-sale-of-existing-shares-ed6229e0

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