Just after Elon Musk announced that xAI is now valued at $80 billion, the valuation of OpenAI, which he co-founded with Sam Altman, reached $300 billion following a $40 billion funding round led by SoftBank Group, its main partner in two joint ventures: "Stargate," endowed with $500 billion dollars and "SB OpenAI Japan".

The previous $6.6 billion funding round by OpenAI last October had raised its valuation to $157 billion; this has nearly doubled with this new support from SoftBank. The latter is expected to fund $10 billion by mid-April, with the remaining $30 billion to be spread out until next December. However, a clause stipulates that if OpenAI does not declare itself as a for-profit company by then, this amount will be reduced by $10 billion.

According to the company, this funding will allow it "to push the boundaries of AI research even further, evolve our computing infrastructure, and provide increasingly powerful tools to the 500 million people using ChatGPT every week".

The recently integrated image generation feature in ChatGPT, allowing the creation of original visuals or modification of existing images, has indeed gained new users, sparking massive interest, particularly for creating images in the style of Studio Ghibli. In response to this exceptional demand, Sam Altman, its CEO, had to announce the temporary introduction of limits on image generation, explaining that their graphics processing units (GPUs) were overloaded.

OpenAI concludes its announcement as follows:

"We are thrilled to work in partnership with SoftBank Group; few companies understand how to scale transformative technology as they do. Their support will help us continue building AI systems that drive scientific discoveries, enable personalized education, enhance human creativity, and pave the way for AGI that benefits all of humanity."

Cet article publirédactionnel est publié dans le cadre d'une collaboration commerciale

Translated from OpenAi annonce une levée de fonds majeure de 40 milliards de dollars menée par SoftBank

To better understand

What is AGI and why is it important for OpenAI?

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is an advanced form of AI capable of performing any human cognitive task. For OpenAI, developing AGI means creating AI systems that can help solve complex and diverse global problems, aligning with their mission to make AI beneficial for all humanity.