Microsoft (MSFT) -) shares edged lower in early Wednesday trading following reports that suggest OpenAI, the market-leading AI startup it backed earlier this year, is exploring the sale of new shares that could see its overall value triple.
The Wall Street Journal reported last Tuesday that OpenAI, which developed the AI technology behind ChatGPT last year, is looking at a secondary share offering that would value the San Francisco-based tech group at between $80 billion and $90 billion.
OpenAi's last funding round, which included a $10 billion from Microsoft, valued the group at around $30 billion. Reports at the time suggested that Microsoft's investment, its third into the group, would value its stake at around 49%.
“We formed our partnership with OpenAI around a shared ambition to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research and democratize AI as a new technology platform,” said CEO Satya Nadella at the time of the funding in January. “In this next phase of our partnership, developers and organizations across industries will have access to the best AI infrastructure, models, and toolchain with Azure to build and run their applications.”
Microsoft shares were marked 0.15% lower in mid-day Wednesday trading to change hands at $311.63 each.
Earlier this summer, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said it plans to investigate OpenAI over allegations linked to the use of personal data in the ChatGPT platform.
The FTC said it is concerned that ChatGPT, a large-language model search engine launched by OpenAI earlier this year, is generating "statements about real individuals that are false, misleading, or disparaging."
CEO Sam Altman said OpenAI built its latest version of the chatbot, GPT-4, "On top of years of safety research and spent 6+ months after we finished initial training making it safer and more aligned before releasing it."
"We protect user privacy and design our systems to learn about the world, not private individuals," he added in a series of posts on the Twitter micro-blogging website.
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