New Funding Round Talks Indicate OpenAI Worth North Of $100 Billion

OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company backed by Microsoft, is preparing to raise at least $1 billion in a new funding round, which would value the company at over $100 billion. The Wall Street Journal reported that venture capital firm Thrive Capital is set to lead the funding round. OpenAI was established eight years ago as a competitor to Google's DeepMind. Microsoft has invested $13 billion into OpenAI since 2019 and owns a 49% share of the company's profit. The new funding round comes after OpenAI finalized a deal to sell existing shares through a tender offer spearheaded by Thrive, allowing employees to sell shares at a valuation of around $80 billion. OpenAI's annualized revenue is currently $3.4 billion. The company recently announced it's testing SearchGPT, a combination of AI technology and real-time search data that allows users to search the internet with ChatGPT.