Singapore State Investment Company Temasek is in talks with artificial intelligence (AI) developer OpenAI about investing in the company.
financial time reported on Tuesday that executives at Temasek, one of the world's largest state investors, had several rounds of talks with the CEO of OpenAI. Sam Altman In recent months.
Citing sources familiar with the discussions, the Financial Times said Temasek, which has an asset portfolio worth $287 billion, was initially interested in investing in Hydrazine capitalAltman's venture capital fund, but recent conversations included the possibility of investing in OpenAI.
Benzinga has reached out to Temasek and OpenAI for comment. Temasek responded by saying that “as a matter of policy, we decline to comment on market speculation.”
OpenAI chip manufacturing project
If true, the talks come as Altman seeks funds to contribute to global semiconductor manufacturing output. To this end, he has already been in talks with Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, as Benzinga reported last month.
Altman's ambitious proposed project would likely cost around $7 trillion and he is reportedly seeking support from US government officials to increase global chip capacity in anticipation of an expected boom in demand for the development and deployment of AI.
altman wrote in x last month: “We believe the world needs more AI infrastructure (fab capacity, power, data centers, etc.) than people currently plan to build.
“Building large-scale AI infrastructure and a resilient supply chain is crucial for economic competitiveness. OpenAI will try to help.”
Microsoft Corporation MSFT It is currently the largest investor in OpenAI with around $13 billion in backing. But several venture capital groups have invested smaller amounts in the company, including Capital of the redwoods and Andreessen Horowitz.
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The complex structure of OpenAI
Despite, or because of, scrutiny from global regulators, Microsoft has repeatedly said it has no interest in owning or controlling OpenAI. However, its large investment grants Microsoft an exclusive license to OpenAI's intellectual property, excluding any generative AI (GenAI) implementations the company may eventually make.
So it remains a mystery what a potentially large investment from a sovereign wealth fund or other state-backed mega-fund could mean for OpenAI's ownership structure.
And while Microsoft's investment entitles it to a share of OpenAI's profits, the huge revenue growth seen at the company since the launch of ChatGPT has yet to turn a profit due to huge development costs.
This is another reason why the company would like to build chip manufacturing infrastructure to rely less on expensive processing equipment from companies like Nvidia Corporation NVDAwhose graphics processing units (GPUs) it primarily uses in its large language model systems.
Now read: Sam Altman seeks Biden's help for OpenAI's $7 trillion AI chip manufacturing dream
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