OpenAI in talks to sell its shares in tender offer

OpenAI, the artificial intelligence (AI) research lab behind chatbot ChatGPT, is reportedly in talks to sell existing shares in a tender offer, valuing the company at about $29 billion. The deal would attract investment of at least $300 million in share sales.

 

Venture-capital firms Thrive Capital and Founders Fund are in talks to buy shares. The deal is structured as a tender offer, with the investors buying shares from existing shareholders such as employees.

 

OpenAI was founded by billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk with investor Sam Altman. OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT is a software application designed to mimic human-like conversation based on user prompts and can respond to a large range of questions while imitating human speaking styles.

 

OpenAI hopes to one day achieve what AI researchers call “artificial general intelligence,” or technology that can fully mirror the intelligence and capabilities of humans. Microsoft Corp, which invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019, was working to launch a version of its search engine Bing using the AI behind the now viral ChatGPT.