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OpenAI closed US$122 billion in funding last week, adding to the US$110 billion in commitments it announced in February. With a post-money valuation of US$852 billion, the company looks to be nearing its final form before the planned IPO later this year.
Look a little closer and the picture gets murkier. In secondary markets – where OpenAI shares are traded through mechanisms such as special-purpose vehicles – the demand has reportedly cooled down, with one platform having about US$600 million of the company’s shares left unsold.
The issue is OpenAI’s latest valuation, as interested investors are only willing to bid at a discounted valuation of US$765 billion. Meanwhile, Anthropic’s shares are changing hands at a premium to its current valuation.
Just four months ago, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman went on an investor podcast and bragged that he could find a buyer for OpenAI shares quickly if the investor wanted out. That didn’t age well.
Made by Miguel Cordon/Tech in Asia with the help of AI
Inside the company, many shifts are taking place. It killed its video app Sora and abandoned several side projects.
The company is now focused on turning ChatGPT into a super app. That aligns well with the third-party app integration initiative it started six months ago.
ChatGPT currently has access to more than 300 apps, including the latest one from Shutterstock. But developers are reportedly limiting what those integrations can do because they don’t want to hand over the customer relationship and payment layer to OpenAI.
As a result, users have a worse experience with the mini apps within ChatGPT compared to the standalone versions.
In AI, the headline is rarely where the stories are. This week, we found one inside traveltech giant Agoda, where 2,000 engineers no longer write code from scratch – and where the AI once deleted a test it couldn’t pass.
Glenn Kaonang, journalist
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