E-Paper
OpenAI now behind only TikTok, SpaceX as valuation hits $80 billion with latest deal
OpenAI will sell shares in a tender offer led by venture firm Thrive Capital and is not a traditional funding round where money's raised for business operations
OpenAI has completed a deal that values the company at $80 billion or more, the New York Times has reported. Also, according to NYT, OpenAI's latest valuation is nearly triple of what the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) firm was previously valued at, around 10 months ago.
Sam Altman-led OpenAI will now sell its shares in a tender offer led by venture firm Thrive Capital, the NYT report said, adding that the deal will let OpenAI employees cash out their shares in the employer, and is not a traditional funding round where money is raised for business operations.
This also makes OpenAI one of the most-valued tech startups globally, only behind China-based TikTok parent ByteDance, and Elon Musk's SpaceX.
What was OpenAI previously worth?
In a similar deal early last year, the Altman-helmed company was found to be worth $29 billion. Here too, Thrive Capital was involved, along with venture firms Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and K2 Global; together, they agreed to purchase OpenAI shares in a tender offer, valuing the AI startup at around $29 billion.
OpenAI's ‘Sora’
The report on the deal coincides with the ChatGPT maker's introduction of Sora, a new AI tool, that, it says, can ‘create realistic 60-second videos on the basis of text prompts.’
“We’re teaching AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion, with the goal of training models that help people solve problems that require real-world interaction,” said OpenAI in a post introducing Sora.
