8 months ago
Tech entrepreneur Sam Altman is reportedly looking to rise betwixt $5 trillion and $7 trillion to assistance money the accumulation of microchips to summation availability for AI and instrumentality learning, the Wall Street Journal reported connected Feb. 8.
The backing would beryllium utilized to found factories oregon money existing spot manufacturing companies, with OpenAI lone acting arsenic a “significant customer.” The effort does not purpose to rise wealth for Altman’s OpenAI, champion known for its ChatGPT chatbot and GPT ample connection models (LLMs).
Sources told the paper that the fundraising could mostly beryllium funded by indebtedness and whitethorn instrumentality aggregate years to complete.
Potential investors
To concern the project, Altman reportedly seeks investments from a mostly chartless database of investors.
Altman has reportedly discussed the task with SoftBank, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC), and Microsoft, though it is unclear whether those companies mightiness enactment arsenic investors oregon successful different role. Additionally, sources said the UAE has been portion of the talks and could go a imaginable investor.
Altman has reportedly met with US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo to sermon the matter, arsenic the authorities indispensable o.k. specified a venture. However, determination are concerns that the engagement of the UAE could beryllium a imaginable roadblock.
The Journal noted that US lawmakers previously urged the Department of Commerce to analyse Abu Dhabi-based AI steadfast G42 successful January. OpenAI partnered with G42 successful October 2023.
Addressing the spot shortage
The Journal’s study noted that Altman’s fundraising plans “face important obstacles” and “ultimately mightiness not succeed” arsenic the multi-trillion dollar extremity is “outlandishly large.”
According to the newspaper, Altman’s efforts could nevertheless code the wide acknowledged contented of spot shortages. However, the study noted that his backing extremity is larger than astir nationalist debts and sovereign wealthiness funds — it is besides worthy much than the full spot manufacture arsenic of the extremity of 2023.
Global spot income are worthy $527 cardinal annually and are projected to scope $1 trillion by 2030 astatine the earliest. Meanwhile, income of semiconductor manufacturing instrumentality relationship for different $100 cardinal annually.
OpenAI has been vocal astir the shortages and said successful October that it is considering manufacturing its ain chips in-house to resoluteness the issue. Reports from January suggested that those efforts could spot OpenAI raising $100 billion.
It is unclear whether those plans overlap with the trillion-dollar fundraising inaugural reported by the Journal. Other firms person besides started designing their ain chips, including Meta, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, albeit with third-party firms handling the production.
The station OpenAI’s Sam Altman seeking $7T to lick the planetary spot shortage issue appeared archetypal connected CryptoSlate.
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