Report: OpenAI Seeks to Raise ‘Several Billion Dollars’

OpenAI reportedly aims to raise “several billion dollars” in a funding round that would value at above $100 billion.

The round is being led by Thrive Capital and will include participation by Microsoft, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday (Aug. 28), citing unnamed sources.

OpenAI did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

When employees sold shares in late 2023, OpenAI was valued at $86 billion, according to the report.

The latest funding round comes at a time when there is fierce competition in the artificial intelligence (AI) space, but OpenAI’s ChatGPT remains the market leader with hundreds of millions of monthly users, the report said.

Staying on the cutting edge of AI will require billions of dollars in spending, per the report. OpenAI spent more than $100 million to build its GPT-4 AI model and is expected to spend more on the one it is developing now.

It was reported Tuesday (Aug. 27) that OpenAI aims to release its next-level AI product, called “Strawberry,” in the fall and that the product will be able to solve problems and tasks that are beyond the capabilities of current AI models.

Strawberry reportedly will be able to solve math problems it has never encountered; perform high-level tasks like developing market strategies and solving complex word puzzles; and perform “deep research.”

It was reported in July that major investments in AI firms largely fueled American venture funding that reached its highest quarterly total in two years.

During the second quarter, venture capital investments totaled $55.6 billion, up 47% from the $37.8 billion startups in the U.S. took in during the first quarter.

Among the investments in AI firms that contributed to this growth were the $6 billion raised by Elon Musk’s xAI and $1.1 billion raised by CoreWeave.

On Aug. 5, Groq raised $640 million in a Series D funding round to scale the capacity of its vertically integrated AI inference platform. The company said it will also use the new funding to add talent, accelerate the development of the next generation of language processing units (LPUs), and add new models and features to GroqCloud.

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