OpenAI Explores Share Sale at $90 Billion Valuation

OpenAI is reportedly exploring a share sale that could value it at $90 billion.

The ChatGPT-maker is in discussions with investors about the sale, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Tuesday (Sept. 26), citing people familiar with the talks.

The sale could potentially value the artificial intelligence (AI) company at $80 billion to $90 billion. The WSJ noted that such a valuation would put OpenAI in the company of firms like ByteDance and SpaceX.

PYMNTS has contacted OpenAI for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

According to the report, OpenAI has told investors it expects to take in $1 billion in revenue this year and earn several billions more next year. The company’s revenue mostly comes from the fees people pay to access ChatGPT and from licensing the large language models (LLMs) that operate ChatGPT to businesses. 

The news comes one day after OpenAI released an updated version of ChatGPT the company says can “see,” “hear,” and “speak” via new voice and image capabilities that let users have a voice conversation or show the AI what they’re talking about.

“Voice and image give you more ways to use ChatGPT in your life,” the company wrote on its blog. “Snap a picture of a landmark while traveling and have a live conversation about what’s interesting about it. When you’re home, snap pictures of your fridge and pantry to figure out what’s for dinner (and ask follow-up questions for a step-by-step recipe).”

Also Monday (Sept. 26), OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that while he isn’t very concerned with the world’s governments overregulating AI, it could happen all the same.

“I also worry about underregulation,” he said. “People in our industry bash regulation a lot. We’ve been calling for regulation, but only of the most powerful systems.

“Models that are like 10,000 times the power of GPT4, models that are as smart as human civilization, whatever, those probably deserve some regulation,” Altman added.

As noted here Tuesday, Altman’s point underscores the fact that AI is quickly evolving, with worldwide regulation efforts falling behind. 

“While the European Union moved first in creating laws, and China was quickest in enacting a framework around AI, there exists no clear global leader or multilateral policy for the technology, which observers and insiders alike consider to be one of the biggest computing transformations the world has ever known,” PYMNTS wrote.