OpenAI’s valuation has surpassed $80 billion following recent transactions and the launch of Sora.
OpenAI’s valuation soared to more than $80 billion after closing a recent deal, the New York Times reported on February 17.
The company is reportedly working on a public offering led by Thrive Capital to raise more funds while providing tangible benefits to its employees.
Tender offer strategy
The deal will allow OpenAI employees to sell their shares, with the proceeds added to the company’s coffers. This approach differs from the traditional methods of raising capital that companies typically use to expand their operations.
However, the tender offer strategy is not new to OpenAI. Taking a similar approach in 2023, venture capital giants such as Thrive Capital, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and K2 Global participated in a public offering that valued the company at about $29 billion at the time.
The repeated use of this strategy is indicative of OpenAI’s deliberate approach to providing liquidity options to its employees while attracting investment without diluting its ownership through existing funding rounds.
Further diversifying his strategic initiatives, CEO Sam Altman is actively seeking opportunities to strengthen the company’s capabilities, particularly in the semiconductor space.
Altman’s support to a variety of stakeholders, including potential investors, semiconductor manufacturers, and energy suppliers, highlights its ambitious plans to support and innovate the infrastructure that supports the development of AI technologies.
By positioning OpenAI as a key customer for future chip manufacturing projects, Altman is focusing its attention on increasing global chip production capacity, which will be critical to developing and deploying advanced AI technologies.
conch
Amid these strategic and organizational developments, OpenAI has continued to innovate, most notably with the release of Sora, a text-to-video model.
Sora can create detailed videos from text prompts, extend the narrative of existing videos, and create scenes from still images.
OpenAI acknowledges that Sora is in the early stages of development and requires further improvements, but its introduction marks an important milestone in the field of generative AI.
The announcement led to a surge in AI-related digital assets, including Altman’s Worldcoin, which rose 40% following the news. The value of the token has continued to rise and is trading at $4.79 at press time, up another 8% in the last 24 hours.
Meanwhile, the token is rising by more than 90% every week. The value of the token has continued to rise despite controversies surrounding biometric data collection in several countries.
The past year has been a tumultuous one for OpenAI. It was during this time that Altman was briefly removed from his position as CEO by the company’s board of directors.
This decision was met with significant opposition from company employees, leading to his reinstatement. The episode revealed the strong internal support for Altman’s leadership and highlighted the challenges and conditions of one of the AI industry’s leading companies.