Finance Associated Press, February 18 (edited by Liu Rui).With OpenAI's latest agreement with venture capital firm Thrive Capital, OpenAI's valuation has increased to more than $80 billion.
This means that the company's valuation has grown exponentially, nearly tripling nine months ago, and making it the third most valuable start-up in the world.
OpenAI jumped to become the world's third-largest unicorn
As early as the end of last year, it was reported that OpenAI was negotiating a new *** deal, and at that time it was reported that the deal valued OpenAI at up to $90 billion.
And according to the latest reports, people familiar with the matter confirmed that OpenAI will proceed with the existing *** under a takeover bid led by Thrive, noting that the deal will allow the company's employees to cash out their ** at the AI company. Under the deal, the company is valued at nearly $80 billion.
And as a comparison, when OpenAI completed a $300 million *** 9 months ago,The company is still valued at about $27 billion.
The $80 billion valuation means the company is the world's third-most valuable tech startup, behind ByteDance ($225 billion) and Elon Musk-led space transport company SpaceX ($150 billion), according to intelligence **CB Insights.
The biggest beneficiary of the AI wave
OpenAI was founded in 2015, and the company has received widespread attention, but it began at the end of 2022 when the company released ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chat tool, and in one fell swoop, it detonated the boom in artificial intelligence throughout last year.
OpenAI had a great time last year, not only gaining a huge amount of attention, but also receiving large investments from a number of technology companies and investors.
So far, Microsoft has invested a total of $13 billion in OpenAI, although the tech giant says it does not own any shares in OpenAI but is "entitled to a share of the profit distribution." In April last year, a number of venture capital firms, including Thrive, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and K2 Global, also agreed to buy new shares in OpenAI, valuing it at around $27 billion.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was ousted from the company at one point last year, but he was quickly reinstated after causing an uproar within the company. He said the company has no intention of going public in the near future.
At present, OpenAI continues to make rapid progress on the road of artificial intelligence development. This Thursday, EST, OpenAI released its latest product, Sora, which is capable of generating based on text prompts. However, the service is not yet available to the public, and it's unclear when it will, as OpenAI says it is still taking "several important security measures" to address potential issues related to misinformation and bias.