OpenAI, the trailblazing company that owns ChatGPT, is permitting its staff to sell about USD 1.5 billion worth of shares to SoftBank Group of Japan in a fresh tender offer.
After investing in the start-up’s most recent round of funding, SoftBank’s billionaire CEO Masayoshi Son has been adamant about acquiring a bigger stake in the company, according to CNBC, which broke the story first.
In October 2024, the Japanese conglomerate gave USD 500 million to the Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence start-up, which was valued at USD 157 billion, according to a media report. The deadline for OpenAI staff is December this year.
As per the Reuters report, the stock’s offer price is in line with the AI company’s previous funding round and they have 24 days to determine whether they wish to take part in the new funding round. Another source stated that SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 will provide the investment.
Masayoshi Son has been working to increase his company’s exposure to the AI wave by purchasing chip startup Graphcore and investing in OpenAI. His recent statement that he was saving money “so I can make the next big move” was devoid of any information regarding his investment strategies.
OpenAI’s meteoric rise in terms of product popularity and valuation has captured the world’s imagination. Since the launch of ChatGPT, the chatbot has attracted 250 million weekly active users.
Meanwhile, French telecom operator Orange has struck a multi-year partnership with OpenAI in Europe that will give the venture access to the start-up’s pre-release AI models, group chief artificial intelligence officer Steve Jarrett said. Orange will become the first telecoms firm in Europe to have direct access to OpenAI’s models.
“OpenAI’s models are the most popular. And so it made financial sense for us to have a direct billing relationship. We have the ability to have access to pre-release versions of their models. We have the ability to influence the road map…Those models are all served from secure infrastructure that’s hosted in Europe,” Jarrett told Reuters in an interview, while adding that over 50,000 Orange employees currently use OpenAI models.
Orange has also signed an agreement with Meta and OpenAI to translate regional African languages for the telecoms group. The provider will share data samples in Wolof and Pular to train Llama and Whisper, respectively Meta and OpenAI large language models.
Orange will use the models to include these languages in its customer support, and will also outsource them to non-commercial clients such as governments, universities and start-ups.