OpenAI raises $6.6bn in latest funding round

A number of backers are understood to have contributed to the latest fundraising, including venture capital firm Thrive Capital, chipmaker Nvidia and Microsoft. Nvidia’s chips are used to power AI, while Microsoft is already OpenAI’s biggest backer.

According to Bloomberg, the software giant contributed around $750m, on top of the $13bn it has already invested in the American owner of ChatGPT.

The fundraising, which was confirmed late on Wednesday, values the start-up at around $157bn, putting it on par with other highly-valuable start-ups such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

In a statement, OpenAI said: "The new funding will allow us to double down on our leadership in frontier AI research, increase compute capacity and continue building tools that help people solve hard problems.

"We aim to make advanced intelligence a widely accessible resource. We’re grateful to our investors for their trust in us."

OpenAI was founded in 2015 and is currently structured as a not-for-profit. It is understood to be discussing moving to a for-profit model, though could face legal hurdles.

Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "Some reports suggest that OpenAI is running at around a $5.5bn annual revenue run rate, doubling each year. That suggests a valuation of around 15 times forward revenue, which isn’t completely crazy.

"Things get more interesting in the messy corporate structure, and whether the full transition to a for-profit company is now fully underway remains to be seen."