(March 17): OpenAI is in advanced discussions to form a joint venture with private equity firms, including TPG Inc, Brookfield Asset Management and Bain Capital, that would focus on bolstering adoption of its artificial intelligence (AI) software, according to people familiar with the matter.
The joint venture would have a pre-money valuation of roughly US$10 billion ($12.79 billion), said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private information. The private equity investors would commit about US$4 billion towards the venture, the people said.
TPG, Brookfield and Bain declined to comment. In a social media post on Monday, Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s chief executive officer of applications, described the venture as “building a deployment arm” for its technology, without directly commenting on the participants, financing and valuation.
Reuters was first to report the discussions for a joint venture.
OpenAI and its rivals have been pushing to convince more business professionals to pay up for their services to offset the immense cost of developing AI systems and support their lofty valuations. Those efforts have focused on sectors such as financial services and healthcare.
Anthropic PBC is also in talks with private equity firms, including Blackstone Inc, about forming a joint venture to sell its Claude AI software to businesses, according to a report in the Information, citing a person familiar with the matter.
See also: Tesla, LG Energy to build US$4.3 bil plant in Michigan
Last month, OpenAI also introduced a new product called Frontier that’s meant to allow organisations to build and manage AI agents more easily, with the goal of helping businesses simplify the process of rolling out the technology.
“We are excited to not just be building these technologies but also building many ways for companies to deploy them and get impact,” Simo wrote on Monday.
The ChatGPT maker recently raised US$110 billion in a deal that values the start-up at US$840 billion, including the money raised. OpenAI expects to bring in roughly another US$10 billion from venture capital firms and sovereign wealth funds as the round progresses, Bloomberg News has reported.
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