In this photo illustration, the OpenAI logo is displayed on a mobile phone screen with a photo of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.
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Tiger Global is planning to join OpenAI’s buzzy new funding round that would value the artificial intelligence startup at more than $150 billion, according to sources familiar with the situation who spoke anonymously because details of the round have not yet been made public.
Thrive Capital is leading the round and plans to invest $1 billion. Microsoft, Nvidia and Apple are reportedly in talks to join as well.
Tiger Global, based in New York, has been a big investor in tech startups and later-stage companies for at least 15 years, dating back to pre-IPO investments in Facebook and LinkedIn. In recent years, the firm has invested in other fast-growing AI companies including Scale AI and Cohere. It first bought shares in OpenAI in 2021.
The Information was the first to report on Tiger’s planned participation.
Earlier this year, OpenAI was valued at a reported $80 billion, up from $29 billion the prior year. Annualized revenue reportedly surpassed $2 billion earlier this year.
Growth took off in late 2022 after the company launched its ChatGPT chatbot. That momentum has continued with new OpenAI products for businesses and an expansion into AI-generated photos and videos. The company has doubled its number of weekly active users from late last year to 200 million, according to OpenAI.
The news comes one day after OpenAI released o1, a preview of its new AI model focused on reasoning and “solving hard problems.” It also comes after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joined leaders from Anthropic, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and several American power and utility companies at the White House to discuss the future of artificial intelligence energy infrastructure in the U.S.
The group also talked about bringing the public and private sectors together to talk about AI’s energy usage, data center capacity, semiconductor manufacturing and grid capacity, sources familiar with the meeting told CNBC.
A spokesperson for OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
— CNBC’s Kate Rooney contributed reporting.
