Apple Withdraws from OpenAI's Latest Funding Round, Company May Achieve Record-Setting Financing

2024-09-29

OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research organization, is set to complete its largest-ever funding round next week, with the total expected to reach $6.5 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. However, at this crucial moment, Apple has unexpectedly announced its withdrawal from the investment. Previously, Apple had announced the integration of ChatGPT into Siri, fueling speculation about a possible investment in OpenAI, but this speculation ultimately did not come to fruition.

The success of this funding round marks a near-certain transition for OpenAI from a non-profit organization to a for-profit company. According to The Wall Street Journal, investors in this new round will have the right to withdraw their investment if OpenAI fails to complete this transformation within two years.

Despite recently achieving annual revenues of $4 billion, OpenAI continues to face significant losses and internal conflicts, including employee burnout due to high work pressure and technical delays. Reports indicate that in the rush to launch its latest flagship model, GPT-4, to divert attention from Google's I/O Developers Conference, OpenAI's researchers had only nine days to conduct safety testing on the model.

The success or failure of this funding round will have far-reaching implications for OpenAI's future development and will also attract increased attention to investment trends in the artificial intelligence field.