Historic funding round values OpenAI at $157bn

SAN FRANCISCO - OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, secured $6.6-billion in new funding, propelling its valuation to $157-billion and cementing its position as the world leader in artificial intelligence.

The landmark investment, one of Silicon Valley's largest, was announced by OpenAI on Wednesday.

Founded in 2015 and led by Sam Altman, OpenAI plans to use the funds to advance its AI research, increase computing capacity, and develop tools for solving complex problems.

Thrive Capital led the funding round, with participation from SoftBank, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tiger Global, and MGX, an investment firm controlled by the United Arab Emirates.

Apple, which uses OpenAI models in its generative AI offerings, withdrew from negotiations on participating in the funding.

This investment makes OpenAI the third-largest venture-backed company globally, behind SpaceX and ByteDance.

The company gained prominence in 2022 with the release of ChatGPT, one of the fastest-downloaded apps ever, showcasing the power of generative AI to produce human-like content from simple prompts.

OpenAI followed this with GPT-4, the large language model powering ChatGPT and numerous other AI applications.

The new funding is expected to support the development of GPT-4's successor and accelerate the release of Sora, a tool for creating videos from text commands.

The tech industry views generative AI as a transformative innovation, comparable to PCs or smartphones, with potential to dramatically increase productivity.

Major tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Apple are heavily investing in generative AI to avoid falling behind.

The frenzy has helped drive Wall Street to record levels, turning Nvidia, which provides crucial components for AI training, into one of the world's biggest companies.