After closing a $40 billion fundraising deal from SoftBank, Sam Altman‘s OpenAI is now valued at $300 billion, making it one of the most valuable private companies in the world. The top spot is held by Elon Musk’s SpaceX (at around $350bn) and the second spot is held by by ByteDance, the parent company for TikTok (at around $315bn).
After this round, OpenAI is worth more than most private giants, including Chevron ($294bn), Salesforce ($257bn), McDonald’s ($223bn), Pepsico ($205bn) and Samsung($263bn).
The funding will be delivered in two segments, In the first the $10 billion will be immediate funding whereas the rest $30 billion will be delivered by the end of 2025, as reported by The New York Times.
OpenAI’s Response
The firm said in a statement, that the funding will allow them to push themselves further in AI research and scale up the company’s infrastructure with “increasingly powerful tools”.
OpenAI was started in the year 2015 as a non-profit entity but later it went on to adapt to a capped profit structure through which it collected funds and started working on AI technology.
The firm faced various problems with regard to operation and lawsuits, the most famous one being with Elon Musk, who sued them and tried to stop the company from going nonprofit to capped profit organization but eventually, OpenAI came out of all that and now ChatGPT of OpenAI is drawing 500 million users each weak and after this funding round the company is 3rd largest in the world on the scale of valuation.
In February, various investors including Musk wanted control over the firm but Altman rejected the proposal saying “OpenAi is not for sale”.
