ChatGPT maker OpenAI raises $6.6 billion in fresh funding

NEW YORK

OpenAI as raised $6.6 billion in venture capital investments as part of a broader shift by the ChatGPT maker away from its nonprofit roots .

Led by venture capital firm Thrive Capital, the funding round was backed by tech giants Microsoft, Nvidia and SoftBank, according to a source familiar with the funding.

The investment represents one of the biggest fundraising rounds in U.S. history, and ranks as the largest in the past 17 years that doesn’t include money coming from a single deep-pocketed company.

Microsoft pumped up OpenAI last year with a $10 billion investment in exchange for a large stake in the company’s future growth.

OpenAI said the funding gives it a market value of $157 billion and will “accelerate progress on our mission.”

The influx of money comes as OpenAI has been looking to more fully convert itself from a nonprofit research institute into a for-profit corporation accountable to shareholders.

While OpenAI already has a rapidly growing for-profit division, where most of its staff works, it is controlled by a nonprofit board of directors whose mission is to help humanity by safely building futuristic forms of artificial intelligence.

That sets certain limits on how much profit it makes and how much shareholders get in return for costly investments into the computing power, specialized AI chips and computer scientists it takes to build generative AI tools.

But the governance structure would change if the board follows through with a plan to convert itself to a public-benefit corporation, which is a type of corporate entity that is supposed to help society as well as turn a profit.