OpenAI seeks $90 billion valuation in potential share sale

OpenAI is in talks with potential investors regarding a prospective stock offering, a move that could place the creator of ChatGPT at an estimated valuation range of $80 billion to $90 billion. The new valuation marks a threefold increase from its earlier valuation earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In January 2023, OpenAI garnered a valuation of $30 billion after Microsoft invested a substantial $10 billion investment for a 49% ownership stake in the startup. As part of the funding agreement, Microsoft would get “75% of OpenAI’s profits until it recoups its initial investment once OpenAI figures out how to make money on ChatGPT and other products like image creation tool Dall-E.”

OpenAI also said it expects to generate $1 billion in revenue for the current year, with even greater expectations for 2024. The company’s existing revenue stream primarily stems from its pricing model of $20 per month, which grants users access to its cutting-edge public version, GPT-4.

The Wall Street Journal also noted that the share sale is not yet finalized. OpenAI is still in the early phases of refining its AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) technology, and the timeline for when the company will be able to bring its products to the commercial market remains uncertain. Nonetheless, the eye-popping $90 billion valuation serves as a clear indicator of the considerable optimism that investors hold for OpenAI’s potential.

“The deal is expected to allow employees to sell their existing shares as opposed to the company issuing new ones to raise additional capital. OpenAI representatives have begun pitching investors on the deal, the people said, though it is possible the terms could change. A valuation of $80 billion or more would make OpenAI one of the most highly-valued global startups, behind Elon Musk’s SpaceX and TikTok owner ByteDance,” The WSJ reported.

On November 30, 2022, OpenAI took the internet by storm after it released its dialogue-based AI chatbot called ChatGPT. The new chatbot-powered AI, which has been hailed as a potential game-changer in the world of AI, is a language model trained by OpenAI to interact with humans in a conversational way.

Just five days following its debut, ChatGPT achieved a milestone by surpassing one million users. To provide some context, it took well-established platforms like Netflix 3.5 years, Facebook 10 months, Spotify 5 months, and Instagram 2.5 months to reach the one million user mark.

Founded in 2015 by Elon Musk and Sam Altman, OpenAI is a non-profit research institution with a singular mission: to forge the path toward the creation of safe and advantageous artificial general intelligence (AGI). Throughout its journey, OpenAI has crafted a series of remarkable AI systems, among them the influential GPT-3 language model and the innovative DALL-E 2 image generation model.