Global tech giant Microsoft is reportedly planning to invest up to $10 billion into OpenAI, the creator of the viral AI bot ChatGPT.
The funding could also include other venture firms and would raise OpenAI’s valuation to $29 billion.
It remains unclear as to when the deal would be finalised but documents sent to prospective investors indicated a targeted close by the end of 2022.
In 2019, Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI, which was founded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman. Microsoft’s cloud services arm also provides the computing power needed by the AI firm.
Microsoft and OpenAI representatives are yet to comment on the reports.
The ChatGPT platform was launched to the public by Musk and Altman in November. It immediately rose to popularity, gathering its first million users in less than a week.
The platform imitates human-like conversation based on user prompts.
However, it sparked speculation about its potential to supplant professional writers and even threaten Google’s core search business.
Built on OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model, the company’s Dall-E image-generating model — which accepts written prompts to synthesise art and other images — also opened up discussions regarding AI’s application into creative industries. OpenAI is already working on a successor GPT-4 model for its natural language processing.
