OpenAI’s Valuation Reaches $157 Billion with New Deal

OpenAI raised $6.6bn in its latest funding, raising the company’s value to $157 billion and turning it into one of America’s most valuable startups.

According to the New York Times, OpenAI has now nearly doubled its value from just 9 months ago, when it was valued at $80 billion. The initial discussion of the new deal was revealed a few weeks ago, and the expected value of the company was surpassed this week—it was previously predicted to reach around $100 billion.

People with knowledge of this new deal reported that a few of the companies involved in the investing process were Nvidia, SoftBank, investment firm MGX, and Microsoft—which recently added OpenAI to its list of competitors and has been one of the startup’s largest investors.

OpenAI expects a revenue of $3.7 billion in sales this year, but also to lose $5 billion in costs developing technologies like ChatGPT and other expenses. The company leaders and its investors remain interested and hopeful about its future, and restructuring into a for-profit company is also in discussion.

“Every week, over 250 million people turn to ChatGPT regardless of the scale of the challenge—whether it’s communicating with someone who speaks another language or solving the toughest research problems,” said Sarah Friar, OpenAI’s chief financial officer.

OpenaAI now has about 1,700 employees. The start-up added about 1,000 of these employees during the past 9 months. However, OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati resigned last week along with researchers Bob McGrew and Barret Zoph, adding to the list of the main talents leaving the company, especially after substantial changes in the structure and purpose of the startup.