What You Need To Know About OpenAI’s $300M Share Sale

OpenAI is adding another notch (or five) to its belt.

The maker of the famous generative AI language processing platform ChatGPT closed a $300 million share sale at a valuation between $27 billion and $29 billion, TechCrunch reported on Friday, citing official documents.

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This could mean OpenAI is wrapping up a months-long tender offer The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year.

As a result of the share sale, the company brought on a slew of new investors from longtime OpenAI backers Tiger Global Management, Andreessen Horowitz, and Sequoia Capital, along with newcomers Thrive Capital, and K2 Global.

Active funding to AI

OpenAI did not confirm the news, but the nonprofit-turned-startup continues to dominate the tech startup conversation, driving one third of all funding in January. That was largely due to OpenAI’s (reportedly) massive $10 billion raise that came from Microsoft.

OpenAI is still actively dealmaking, a sign that the generative AI hype isn’t slowing down any time soon. Riding on the coattails of ChatGPT’s success are several generative artificial intelligence companies. In less than than half a year, startups in the AI space have raised over $18 billion and are on track to beat the $41 billion they raised in 2022, per Crunchbase data.

The deal between Microsoft and OpenAI is still the biggest funding round dedicated to the space. SandboxAQ, an AI and quantum computing startup out of Palo Alto raised $500 million in February. Adept AI, which uses AI to change the way people use and interact with computers, raised $350 million in Series B funding in March.

Unfortunately, no matter how much other startups insist they are and have always been AI companies, funding towards other sectors is still slow as interest rates and valuations still adjust to the new normal in tech.