"OpenAI, the research lab behind the viral ChatGPT chatbot, is in talks to sell existing shares in a tender offer that would value the company at around $29 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, making it one of the most valuable U.S. startups on paper despite generating little revenue.
Venture-capital firms Thrive Capital and Founders Fund are in talks to buy shares, the people said. The tender could total at least $300 million in OpenAI share sales, they said. The deal is structured as a tender offer, with the investors buying shares from existing shareholders such as employees, the people said.
The new deal would roughly double OpenAI's valuation from a prior tender offer completed in 2021, when OpenAI was valued at about $14 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported.
OpenAI has generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue, in part from selling its AI software to developers, but some investors have expressed skepticism that the company can generate meaningful revenue from the technology.
No final deal has been reached and terms could change, the people said. OpenAI declined to comment.
OpenAI released a series of artificial-intelligence-based products last year that captured the public's attention, including the image-generation program Dall-E 2 and chatbot ChatGPT.
If the tender goes through at that valuation, OpenAI would be one of the few startups able to raise money at higher valuations in the private market, where investors have pulled back from new deals given last year's technology rout.
Microsoft Corp. also has been in advanced talks to increase its investment in OpenAI, the Journal reported. In 2019, Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI and became its preferred partner for commercializing new technologies for services like search engine Bing and design app Microsoft Design.
OpenAI, led by technology investor Sam Altman, was founded as a nonprofit in 2015 with the goal of pursuing artificial-intelligence research for the benefit of humanity. Its initial backers included Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Mr. Altman.
Under Mr. Altman, OpenAI created a for-profit arm in 2019 so it could more easily raise money to fund the computing power needed to train its algorithms. It took a quicker approach to releasing its AI models to the public than larger competitors like Alphabet Inc.'s Google, which has been slower to publicize its technology in part due to ethical concerns.
ChatGPT, the chatbot that gives users intelligent responses for queries such as "describe a debate between two college students about the value of a liberal arts education," crossed one million users a few days after its Nov. 30 launch, according to a tweet from Mr. Altman. Some industry observers have lauded the tool as a major technological breakthrough and a potential alternative to current search engines down the road, though Mr. Altman has acknowledged that the program's outputs often contained factual errors.
OpenAI hopes to one day achieve what AI researchers call "artificial general intelligence," or technology that can fully mirror the intelligence and capabilities of humans. In a December interview with the Journal, Mr. Altman said OpenAI's tools could transform technology similar to the invention of the smartphone and tackle larger scientific challenges.
Mr. Altman said at the time that OpenAI has no plans to get acquired or go public, meaning investors would likely only be able to cash out through secondary share sales. Mr. Altman has recently told investors that the company would soon be able to generate up to $1 billion in annual revenue in part by charging consumers and businesses for its products, the Journal has reported." [1]
1. AI Startup Targets $29 Billion Value
Berber, Jin; Kruppa, Miles. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 06 Jan 2023: B.1.
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