OpenAI Eyes $40 Bn Funding From Reliance, Others: Report

SUMMARY

ChatGPT maker OpenAI is reportedly in talks with Reliance Industries, Saudi Arabia's PIF and United Arab Emirates' MGX for its $40 Bn funding

OpenAI looks to fuel its model development and infrastructure plan ‘Stargate’

In late March, the AI chatbot company initially announced its $40 Bn funding at a $300 Bn post-money valuation

ChatGPT maker OpenAI is reportedly in talks with Reliance Industries, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and existing shareholder United Arab Emirates’ MGX for its $40 Bn funding.

Citing sources, The Information reported that each investor could put in “at least hundreds of millions of dollars” in the fundraise, as the Microsoft-backed AI frontrunner looks to fuel its model development and infrastructure plan, Stargate.

Inc42 has reached out to OpenAI for comments on the development. The story will be updated based on the response.

In late March, the AI chatbot company initially announced its $40 Bn funding at a post-money valuation of $300 Bn, with ambitions of sharpening its frontiers of AI research and scale its compute infrastructure.

Prior to that, the AI giant was reportedly looking to partner with Reliance on new AI businesses. It sought to join hands with Reliance’s telecom arm Jio to distribute or sell its AI offerings, including ChatGPT.

The talks reportedly saw Reliance, which also offers cloud computing services, considering a proposal to sell OpenAI’s models to its enterprise customers through an API. However, the deal may see the involvement of Microsoft, which has the exclusive rights to resell OpenAI models to businesses through an API.

About a month ago, the AI giant also launched data residency in India and other Asian countries, including Japan and South Korea. This allows users in these regions to store data locally, helping Indian users comply with data sovereignty rules while using OpenAI products like the OpenAI API, ChatGPT Enterprise, and ChatGPT Edu.

Prior to that, OpenAI rolled out its AI agent “Operator” in multiple countries, including India, for its Pro users amid the rise of agentic AI worldwide in February, which can perform several tasks for the user, such as looking at a webpage and interact with it by typing, clicking, and scrolling.

Meanwhile, ChatGPT was down for thousands of users across the globe, including India, a day ago.