The company behind ChatGPT hopes to raise fresh capital from investors. Arm’s main shareholder Softbank is said to be among those interested.

According to the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI is making the rounds at major American investment firms. The company is working on a structure where employees can sell their shares. This should provide an additional injection of capital and increase the market value to eighty to ninety billion dollars, about three times what the company is now worth.

Of course, OpenAI has some advantages. The hype about generative AI is not going away any time soon and with ChatGPT (but also Dall-E) OpenAI has the symbol of the hype. Additionally, the company says it will generate $1 billion in revenue this year from sales of its paid Plus and Enterprise plans and developer APIs. These are numbers that investors like to hear.

On the other hand, OpenAI also needs this additional money. A billion in revenue does not offset the high costs associated with maintaining ChatGPT. The recent addition of speech and image processing requires even more powerful models. A capital injection can give the company additional financial boost.

Softbank

The Wall Street Journal already mentions a well-known name that would be interested in investing in OpenAI: Softbank. You know the Japanese consortium as the main shareholder of the chip designer Arm. The subsidiary’s IPO brought in billions of dollars for Softbank, which the company may reinvest immediately.

In the early years, investment companies gave OpenAI a boost, and Microsoft is now the company’s main sponsor. Microsoft owns 49 percent of OpenAI’s shares and has already invested more than ten billion dollars. The fact that the relationship between mother and daughter is not always perfect could be a reason for OpenAI to sell its shares and become more independent of Microsoft’s billions.