OpenAI just raised $6.6 billion to build ever larger AI models

OpenAI has completed a historic funding round, securing $6.6 billion in investment at a $157 billion valuation, to further its mission of developing general artificial intelligence, according to a Business blog post. The round was led by Thrive Capital, which contributed $1 billion, according to the Financial Times. In addition, it has been reported that THREVIVE has acquired a special transaction which are not provided to other investors that can invest more $ 1 billion in the same evaluation next year if the IA company achieved the purpose of revenue. 

These funds are clearly dependent on OpenAI and there is a reorganization of rumors as a profit company. The company's commercial arm is currently overseen by a non-profit research organization, which has limited returns to investors by 100 times. If OpenAI does not restructure into a for-profit company within two years, investors may demand their money back, Axios reports. Last week, Reuters reported that the company was considering becoming a public benefit corporation .

In an unusual move, OpenAI has asked investors to avoid backing rival startups like Anthropic and Elon Musk's xAI, the Financial Times reported. It's worth noting that OpenAI's latest funding round barely surpassed xAI, which raised $6 billion in May. The funding round values ​​OpenAI at roughly 40 times its reported revenue, an unprecedented figure that highlights just how much hype there is around AI in Silicon Valley. The New York Times reported that OpenAI's monthly revenue in August was $300 million, and the company expects annual revenue of about $3.7 billion this year it estimates revenue will reach $11.6 billion next year.

Those billions of dollars will be spent on the incredibly expensive task of training advanced AI models. Anthropik CEO Dario Amodei said that AI models that cost $1 billion to train are in development, and that $100 billion models are not far away. These costs are only increasing for OpenAI, which wants to build a suite of "inference" models, making this new funding round essential.