OpenAI Has Closed New Funding Round Raising Over $6.5 Billion
- Reference: 0175179531
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/24/10/02/171209/openai-has-closed-new-funding-round-raising-over-65-billion
- Source link:
> The deal is one of the largest-ever private investments, and makes OpenAI one of the three largest venture-backed startups, alongside Elon Musk's SpaceX and TikTok owner ByteDance, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The size of the investment underscores the tech industry's belief in the power of AI, and its appetite for the extremely costly research powering its advancement. The funding round was led by Thrive Capital, the venture capital firm headed up by Josh Kushner, Bloomberg previously reported, along with other global investors.
Financial Times has reported that OpenAI has asked its investors to [2]not back its rivals .
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-02/openai-has-closed-new-funding-round-raising-over-6-5-billion
[2] https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/02/1810206/openai-asks-investors-not-to-back-rival-startups-such-as-elon-musks-xai
Legitimate question (Score:2)
I've been out of the loop on this whole thing. If they're the "open" one can't I just download it for free? Are they even licensing anything? Is this like a Redhat thing where they provide support? Why are people throwing money at what sounds like a non-profit?
Monty Python sketch (Score:2)
> I've been out of the loop on this whole thing. If they're the "open" one can't I just download it for free? Are they even licensing anything? Is this like a Redhat thing where they provide support? Why are people throwing money at what sounds like a non-profit?
Obligatory Monty Python:
"Four days? But the sign outside says 24 hour cleaners!"
"That's just the name of the shop, love."
Re: (Score:2)
Can you link to that sketch?
Re: (Score:2)
This as an article about AI, you know you can just ask chatgpt those questions, right?
ChatGPT
The dialogue you're referring to is from the American sitcom "Seinfeld," specifically Season 2, Episode 7, titled "The Revenge." In this episode, Jerry Seinfeld confronts a dry cleaner about their "Same Day Service" sign when they inform him that his clothes will take two to three days to clean. The clerk responds, "That's just the name of the store."
Usage of "Open" has been extended (Score:2)
The confusion is understandable. Many, many people have interpreted that by prepending the word "Open" to their name, the company would be producing an open-sourced product. Or at a minimum following Open Source philosophy.
Their ChatGPT LLM product is not Open Source in any sense of the agreed-upon definition other than leveraging some open source libraries like TensorFlow. However, the company has adopted the open source philosophy in terms of enhancing the usage of the word "Open" as prepended to anothe
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"OpenAI" is not open and never really was. It has become clear now that the "Open" part of the name was just a lie to get into the market easier. Same as some other famous lies, e.g. "Don't be evil". As soon as business runs well enough, the scum behind these statements drops all pretense and just wants even more money.
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"Open"AI once had the idea to develop AI all for all. They for example released CLIP and GPT-2 (the larger models only very hesitant). Then they got dollar signs in their eyes.
Poof? (Score:3)
I am no AI expert. I know some of the elementary basics. But... Investing in openAI sounds like a big risk. It may be yet another tech bubble that is inflating. Or am I too pessimistic here? I had plenty of conversations with gpt. The thing is just plain stupid. It is like a parrot trying to please you. A few follow up questions and you realise the thing has no clue what it is talking about. What do you guys think of this? .
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Same here. Although I am a PhD leve CS type and have followed the AI field for 35 years now. Did at one time consider going into t, but the lying and overpromising has been a problem since the start of that research area. It seems to attract people with a tenuous relation to reality.
Yes, ChatGPT (and the "alternatives") are plain stupid. They have no reasoning abilities whatsoever, even if some people like to lie about that. All it can do is search a bit better and make pretty sounding language.
There is a sucker born every minute... (Score:2)
Things never change.
Bilions mean nothing. (Score:2)
Facebook spent a lot of billions on developing VR and what we have as a result 10 years later is only incrementally improved from a 2014-era VR headset. Where's the 8K per eye? Where's the lightweight form factor?
crony capitalism tied to AI? (Score:2)
Anyone know how close are Josh Kushner and Jared Kushner (Trump's son in law)?
Just great, OpenAI goes to ProfitAI and now influenced by crony capitalists.
AI is real (Score:2)
The implications of those three words aren't fully grasped yet.
Nobody is worried about business applications. Those are obvious, doable, and mundane.
The prize is the first superhuman AGI, and it's coming as part of the next model sets trained on the 100k size clusters.
Hang on.
Just a guy in the middle of it.
Not investing for profit, but speculating for AGI (Score:2)
OpenAI has raised just shy of $20 billion dollars. Last year, they lost $5b on $3.7b in revenue. In 2025, they have $11.6b in revenue with gain/loss TBD (I predict it will be a loss in the range of 8-10 billion). This is a historically expensive R&D project.
Investors are not going there for the profits in ChatGPT, they are speculating on a potential AGI breakthrough somewhere down the line.
12 months ending Dec 2021:
Business Revenue: 28m
Total Revenue: 34m
Net Income: 0
12 months ending Dec 2022:
Business
AI Winter Part Deux Inbound (Score:4, Insightful)
This time with layoffs that make the dot-com bubble look like the local diner going under.
Venture capitalists have either lost their entire mind, or else are very confident in their ability to judge when they can escape with their hide intact while leaving the other sucker holding the bag.
Re: (Score:1)
> Venture capitalists have either lost their entire mind...
Something tells me the bigger players invest to trigger me-too interest, but on the side are making bigger counter investments that target getting rich off the crash, such as stock "puts", "shorts", or things that expand during tech recessions, like commodities.
In short (no pun intended), the AI market perhaps is not what it looks like to we plebeians.
Re: (Score:3)
Indeed. I hope this time the incompetent part of the AI field (e.g. the ones behind the current hype) all freeze to death. Too many assholes with massively negative contributions to society.