OpenAI is in talks to sell existing employees’ shares at a valuation of $86 billion, people aware of the matter were quoted as saying by Bloomberg.
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The artificial intelligence startup responsible for ChatGPT is in discussions regarding the transaction, referred to as a tender offer, with prospective investors. These sources, who have chosen to remain anonymous due to the confidential nature of the information, revealed that the company has not yet confirmed allocations, and terms may undergo further adjustments, according to a few of these sources.
OpenAI, with a 49% ownership stake held by Microsoft Corp., is headed by CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman. With an estimated valuation of $86 billion, the organization would surpass companies like Stripe and the Chinese online retailer Shein, making it one of the globe's highest-valued privately held enterprises, trailing only SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, and ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.
According to a Bloomberg report in August, the company is making significant progress towards achieving $1 billion in annual revenue as more businesses embrace the technology.
In the preceding month, the Wall Street Journal disclosed discussions at OpenAI regarding a prospective stock offering, potentially valuing the startup between $80 billion and $90 billion.
Last month, OpenAI’s ChatGPT xperienced a contraction in traffic for the third consecutive month in August, according to analytics firm Similarweb.
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According to a Reuters report, OpenAI’s highly acclaimed chatbot saw a traffic reduction by 3.2 per cent to 1.43 billion in August, which was followed by approximately 10% drops from each of the previous two months.
The report further revealed that the amount of time users spend on the website has also been declining since March, from an average of 8.7 minutes on site to 7 minutes on site in August.