THE CRUNCH
OpenAI has received roughly $11 billion in new funding, the first instalment of a round that values the company at $1.25 trillion, Bloomberg reports. The money was wired on Friday, and the full round could grow to $20 billion, with the remainder expected in the coming weeks.
It is a smaller haul than OpenAI wanted at first. Its initial ask was $30 billion based on a $1.4 trillion valuation, but that figure was lowered once AI shares sold off. Anthropic, which is preparing to go public, is also seeing its valuation come under strain, so the chill is not limited to one company.
Backers named so far include Coatue Management, T. Rowe Price, SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz and a UAE-based group. To raise the rest, OpenAI has enlisted investment banks to help recruit rich individual investors, which hints at how much harder large AI funding rounds have become.