OpenAI announces $110bn funding round that would value firm at $840bn
OpenAI said on Friday it is raising $110bn in a blockbuster funding round that would value the ChatGPT maker at $840bn, in a deal that signals the feverish pace of investment in artificial intelligence.It’s more than double the amount the company raised last year, when it racked up $40bn in the largest private tech deal on record.This year’s funding round, which is still open, includes a $30bn investment from SoftBank, $30bn from Nvidia, and $50bn from Amazon, and comes ahead of the AI startup’s expected mega-IPO later this year.Even more investors are expected to join.“We’re super excited about this deal,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told CNBC on Friday.
“AI is going to happen everywhere.It’s transforming the whole economy, and the world needs a lot of collective computing power to meet the demand.”Big tech executives have signaled to their investors in recent weeks that they are doubling down on investing in AI, despite fears that the AI boom could come with heavy costs.AI’s expansion is dependent on the creation of massive datacenters, which are facing scrutiny by lawmakers and communities for driving up energy prices and draining water supplies.There are also fears of AI driving up unemployment, as companies try to replace workers with automated processes.
On Thursday, fintech company Block announced that it would be laying off 4,000 of its 10,000 employees because of gains in AI productivity,That dramatic reduction in workforce appears to be part of a broader trend, as Goldman Sachs noted in February that AI resulted in 5,000 to 10,000 monthly net job losses last year,Big tech companies and large tech investors such as SoftBank are racing to forge partnerships with OpenAI – which is spending heavily on datacenters – betting that closer ties with the company would give them a competitive edge in the AI race,“We are entering a new phase where frontier AI moves from research into daily use at global scale,” OpenAI said in a company blog post on Friday,“Leadership will be defined by who can scale infrastructure fast enough to meet demand, and turn that capacity into products people rely on.
ChatGPT now has more than 900 million weekly active users and more than 50 million consumer subscribers.OpenAI also highlighted the power of its products like Codex, its cloud-based software engineering agent that’s available to paid ChatGPT subscribers – describing its output as equivalent to a “top engineer”.“Weekly Codex users have more than tripled since the start of the year to 1.6M,” the company wrote.“More people are now creating, automating, and shipping software that once required a full engineering team.
”Amazon will start with an initial $15bn investment, followed by another $35bn in the coming months “when certain conditions are met”, OpenAI wrote, without elaborating on what they were,Along with the investment, OpenAI and Amazon have also struck a deal, in which OpenAI will utilize two gigawatts of computing capacity powered by Amazon’s in-house Trainium chips, the companies said,“This agreement lowers the cost and improves the efficiency of producing intelligence at scale,” OpenAI said in a statement on Friday,Amazon’s cloud computing platform, AWS, will also be the exclusive third-party cloud provider for OpenAI Frontier, the ChatGPT maker’s enterprise platform for building, deploying and managing AI agents,The partnership does not change OpenAI’s existing relationship with Microsoft.
Microsoft Azure still remains the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI’s APIs that provide access to OpenAI’s models, the companies said,OpenAI’s first party products will continue to be hosted on Azure, and Microsoft holds its exclusive license and access to intellectual property across OpenAI models and products,It was not immediately clear whether Nvidia’s $30bn investment replaced its earlier commitment announced in September under which Nvidia would invest up to $100bn in the startup,OpenAI said in its statement that this expansion would strengthen its ability to “train and deploy frontier models at global scale”,Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang affirmed his commitment to working with OpenAI in January in response to reports of tension between the two companies.
Green party membership in UK passes 200,000 after byelection victory
The Green party said its membership had passed 200,000 this weekend in the wake of its victory in the Gorton and Denton byelection, in which it overturned a huge Labour majority.The party’s membership has tripled since September last year, when it was about 68,000, after the announcement of Zack Polanski as its leader.The Green victory in Gorton and Denton is its first in a national byelection, forcing Labour into third place with Reform in second.The Greens now have five MPs and are regularly matching the Lib Dems in the polls while snapping at the heels of Labour and the Conservatives.Labour is under pressure from some of its MPs to steer more to the left to win back progressive voters from the Greens after the byelection result, where 34-year-old plumber Hannah Spencer was elected
Keir Starmer was advised to ditch net zero. He needs to re-embrace it
Less than a year ago, Keir Starmer stood in front of an audience of senior officials and business leaders from 60 countries in London to declare climate action was “in the DNA of my government”.Vowing to go “all out” for net zero and to “accelerate” while others were slowing down, the Lancaster House speech was his strongest intervention yet on the issue. “We’re paying the price for our overexposure to the rollercoaster of international fossil fuel markets,” he said. “Homegrown clean energy is the only way to take back control of our energy system.”For many who know Starmer, that speech reflected his genuine and rationally thought-out view
Few will mourn leader of ‘evil’ regime Ali Khamenei, says UK defence secretary
The UK defence secretary has said few will mourn Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, whose death was announced after US and Israeli airstrikes.John Healey, a senior cabinet minister, described the Iranian regime as “evil” and said it had menaced the west by sponsoring at least 20 terrorist plots to attack the UK as well as involvement in proxy wars.He did not criticise the US and Israeli strikes, saying it was “for the US to set out and explain” whether its action was legal. But he also refused to be drawn on the UK having declined use of its military bases for the attacks.While distancing the UK from the strikes, Healey said the government’s role was now to act defensively
Ex-minister adds to UK calls for ban on political donations in cryptocurrency
A former Labour minister has added her voice to those of a growing list of experts and senior MPs calling for a ban on political donations in cryptocurrency as concerns grow over foreign interference in British elections.Rushanara Ali, the Labour MP who helped draft the elections bill when she was a minister in the communities department, called for the government to strengthen the legislation with an outright ban on donations in digital currencies.Ali is planning to intervene when the bill comes back in front of MPs on Monday, as ministers admit they will need to go further to prevent foreign interference in a number of ways.“The enemies of democracy are constantly looking at new ways to undermine our system,” Ali said. “I urge ministers to go further to block the use of cryptocurrencies to funnel money into British politics
Shabana Mahmood’s double down on immigration ‘disappointing’, says Alf Dubs
The home secretary’s decision to double down on hardline immigration reforms in light of Labour’s byelection defeat to the Green party is “disappointing”, according to the Labour peer Alf Dubs.Lord Dubs, a child refugee who fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia on the Kindertransport in 1939, had previously accused Shabana Mahmood of “pulling up the drawbridge” on child migrants.Hannah Spencer, a plumber and Green councillor, won the previously safe Labour seat of Gorton and Denton in east Manchester on Thursday, overturning a majority of 13,000. The Labour candidate, Angeliki Stogia, came third, behind Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin.Labour has been accused of alienating voters on its left flank by trying to combat the rise of Reform, particularly on the issue of immigration
Labour must cease taking progressive voters for granted, says Sadiq Khan
The mayor of London has said the Gorton and Denton byelection has exposed a “far-reaching change and fracturing” in UK politics and Labour must ditch its “flawed strategy” of taking liberal progressives for granted.In what appears to be an attack on Keir Starmer, Sadiq Khan challenged the prime minister’s branding of the Green party and its policies as “extreme”, saying many of its supporters shared Labour’s values but were disappointed in the government.Plumber Hannah Spencer overturned a Labour majority of more than 13,000 to become the Green party’s fifth MP. Her party has enjoyed a rise in popularity under its new leader, Zack Polanski, attracting many disaffected former Labour supporters.The Labour candidate, Angeliki Stogia, came third, just behind Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin, in one of the most humiliating byelection results in Labour’s history
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