OpenAi, Silicon Valley’s tech giant and standard-bearer for generative artificial intelligence, is facing a turning point in its history. Originally conceived as a not-for-profit project, Sam Altman’s company is succumbing for good to the commercial siren calls, to the point of leading to an unprecedented wave of departures and a questioning of the ethics of its development.
Following its latest fund-raising round of $6.6 billion in early October, OpenAI, parent company of the highly publicized ChatGPT and Dall-E, has seen its valuation double to $157 billion.
Behind this new record, led by Thrive Capital, all would be well in the best of worlds for the company, which has grown from 750 to 1,700 employees… if this capital increase wasn’t overshadowed by the cascade of departures of its most eminent executives, worried about the adoption of commercial status by Sam Altman’s company.
Indeed, it seems that Microsoft, OpenAI’s main backer, which has already invested some $13 million in the tech company, is keen to make its investments profitable.
A questionable change of status
Following its fund-raising, OpenAI finds itself valued at $157 billion, or 40 times its reported sales. The New York Times reported monthly revenues of $300 million in August. The Californian AI nugget anticipates annual sales of around $3.7 billion by 2024, and $11.6 billion next year.
This recent funding may actually be contingent on the company becoming a for-profit entity. Indeed, since its creation at the end of 2015 in San Franscisco, OpenAI has been broken down into two structures: a non-profit association whose purpose was to ensure secure, beneficial AI for all, on the one hand, and a capped for-profit subsidiary poised to hold a majority stake.
However, this change is not without consequences for the nature of the developments carried out, the speed of product launches and, above all, the implementation of security measures.
On its blog, OpenAI states that this round of funding should enable the company to develop general-purpose AI (as intelligent as humans).
But at the same time, the company is still not profitable, posting a $5 billion loss this year according to the New York Times.
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