ChatGPT-developer OpenAI's valuation has risen threefold to at least US$80 billion since the start of the year, according to reports of ongoing talks with investors.
The San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup, where Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is a 49% shareholder, is looking to sell existing shares owned by employees, with the price giving the company a valuation of between US$80 billion and US$90 billion, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
This is up from its US$29 billion valuation at the start of the year, when it was looking to raise capital (later confirmed as US$300 million), and up from around US$20 billion in 2021.
If the new valuation is confirmed, it would put OpenAI near the top of the global list of the world's most valuable private companies, known as unicorns.
Another fundraising?
An employee share sale would not bolster OpenAI's balance sheet, but the WSJ report suggested it could come ahead of another fundraising round.
Analysts at Wedbush said a further funding round would be likely to fund further training requirements and if the story is accurate, "we would see such a result as suggesting that a sharp fall-off in AI investment is unlikely in the intermediate term" and be "broadly positive for the AI hardware ecosystem", such as NVIDIA
"Similarly, we would expect incremental institutional investment at these levels would suggest that Open AI has a clear revenue pipeline (which also would support incremental investment in training and inference)," the analysts said in a note to clients.
Good news for Microsoft and other backers
Backers at the previous lower valuation include Microsoft, whose reported US$10 billion investment was completed in January, and Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive and K2 Global, which contributed to the April funding round.
This year has seen the release of the latest versions of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot software, including GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 in March.
The chatbot, which can communicate with users through text and images, has quickly gained viral popularity and reached over one million users within five days, with a figure of over 100 million users reported this summer as it added new tweaks.
OpenAI was founded in 2015 by tech figures including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Sam Altman with the aim of developing “safe” AI.