It is reported that Apple and Nvidia are negotiating investment matters with OpenAI, and the two companies plan to invest about $100 million each to strengthen their AI cooperation with OpenAI.

Earlier, it was reported that OpenAI has started a new round of financing, intending to push the company's valuation to more than $100 billion. Venture capital firm Thrive will lead the investment with an investment of about $1 billion. Microsoft has previously held 49% of OpenAI's shares with about $13 billion in funds, making it its largest shareholder, and is said to participate in this financing again.

In October 2023, the company sold existing employee shares, raising the latest valuation to $86 billion. This financing will become the largest external capital injected into OpenAI since 2023, and the net worth will directly jump to 100 billion. There are also reports that OpenAI's existing shareholders have recently negotiated to sell shares at a company valuation of $103 billion, and any new investors may bring the valuation to or above this level.

Representatives for Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, OpenAI and Thrive Capital declined to comment.

Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, OpenAI has been a leader in the field of generative AI chatbots, and has also set off a "user war" in this field among technology giants such as Microsoft, Google, and Meta. Companies from all walks of life have invested billions of dollars in this technology to maintain their competitive advantage and occupy market share.

Public information shows that Microsoft has invested about $13 billion in OpenAI in the past five years and currently holds 49% of the company's shares. In 2019, Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI, an additional $2 billion in 2021, and another $10 billion in January last year.

In a memo a few days ago, OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told employees that the company is actively seeking new funds for training a new generation of large models and other operating expenses, and did not disclose other specific information. Since December last year, the company has been discussing raising funds at a valuation of $100 billion or more.

However, due to the high cost of building and running models, OpenAI is still in a loss-making state. Earlier reports have pointed out that OpenAI is facing a funding gap of about $5 billion. With an annual revenue of $3.4 billion compared to the $8.5 billion spent on AI training, the company's profitability is being questioned by the market.

On August 29, Eastern Time, OpenAI released a report saying that the number of weekly active users of ChatGPT has exceeded 200 million, twice as many as a year ago. 92% of Fortune 500 companies are using its products, and the use of GPT-4o mini's automated API has doubled.

In addition, OpenAI also plans to release the next-generation AI product "Strawberry" this fall to solve tasks and problems that current AI models cannot cope with.

As the world's largest AI accelerator manufacturer, Nvidia currently accounts for about 80%-95% of the AI ​​accelerator market share.

As a key supplier to OpenAI, Nvidia provides it with the key infrastructure needed to develop and run AI tools such as ChatGPT. Its latest quarterly report shows that Nvidia's revenue increased by 122% year-on-year to $30 billion. Although the second quarter guidance exceeded market expectations, the stock price still fell because investors were accustomed to its strong performance.

At the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June this year, Apple announced that OpenAI became the first official partner of Apple Intelligence, integrating ChatGPT into iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and the new version of macOS, responsible for handling complex AI tasks such as text generation, and if necessary, will also intervene in the use of Siri. In addition, Apple will also serve as an observer on the board of OpenAI.

Analysts pointed out that Apple's investment in OpenAI negotiations is to ensure that it can obtain the application rights of ChatGPT. Although OpenAI faces fierce competition, ChatGPT is still a leader in this field. With the arrival of Apple's fall conference in September, the AI ​​function of the latest generation of iPhones will attract global attention.