OpenAI cuts its funding target by a third
Between 10 and 20 billion dollars, and by Friday 30th it is reported to have raised just 11 billion. Meanwhile, S&P has placed Meta on watch: negative outlook on the rating
The storm sweeping through Big Tech has not spared OpenAI. The ChatGPT company is reported to have slashed its fundraising targets for the funding round – by at least a third, or a staggering $10 billion – a round with which it had hoped to pave the way for a record-breaking IPO.
The artificial intelligence giant led by Sam Altman has reportedly resigned itself to lowering its target to $20 billion rather than $30 billion, according to the Financial Times, thereby reducing its implied valuation to $1,250 billion from $1,400 billion just a month ago.
The failure may ultimately prove to be even more dramatic: according to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI initially failed to meet even its scaled-back expectations, raising just $11 billion by Friday, a figure it hopes to increase by approaching family offices and high-net-worth individuals.
The entire AI sector – and the technology sector more broadly – has, after all, come under fire on Wall Street. Following Google, the market struck even harder at Intel, whose share price plummeted by 30 per cent on Friday. The Nasdaq index – down 7.8 per cent from its all-time high on 6 October – is experiencing increasingly frequent and intense volatility. This turbulence does not bode well for Anthropic’s stock market listing either; just a few days ago, the company filed its prospectus for an IPO – scheduled for next month – which aims to be the largest ever: $1,500 billion or more, according to the company’s hopes.
OpenAI is also aiming to go public next year. And the current funding round had been presented as the last opportunity for investors before a (now widely anticipated) surge in the company’s value.
