OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has held talks with potential traders, together with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) authorities, in search of to lift trillions of {dollars} to reshape the worldwide semiconductor trade and develop its capability to energy AI, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Thursday.
Altman is reportedly trying to resolve a few of the greatest challenges confronted by the quickly increasing synthetic intelligence sector – together with a scarcity of the costly laptop chips wanted to energy large-language fashions like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The international chip trade is presently dominated by only a few companies, together with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and U.S.-based NVIDIA.
While many international locations have unveiled plans to assist home chip manufacturing, the monetary assist they’ve supplied pales as compared with the huge sums of cash Altman has reportedly been discussing with traders.
The undertaking might require elevating as a lot as $7 trillion, the Journal mentioned, citing individuals aware of the matter.
This is roughly a trillion {dollars} greater than the market worth of the world’s two largest public firms – Apple and Microsoft – mixed.
The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) has forecast a 13.1% leap in international chip gross sales to $595.3 billion this yr, in contrast with a drop of about 8% in gross sales in 2023.
The quantities Altman has mentioned are outlandishly massive by the requirements of company fundraising, the report added.
Investors have valued OpenAI at greater than $80 billion.
An OpenAI spokesperson advised the Journal the corporate has held “productive discussions about increasing global infrastructure and supply chains for chips, energy and data centers.”
They added that they might “continue to keep the U.S. government informed given the importance to national priorities.”
Altman has held conferences with senior authorities officers from the UAE in addition to SoftBank’s CEO Masayoshi Son and representatives from TSMC, in line with the WSJ.
Both Bloomberg and the Financial Times have additionally reported on a few of Altman’s conferences in current weeks.
Altman has floated the thought of constructing dozens of chip-fabrication vegetation within the subsequent few years with cash from Middle East traders, after which paying TSMC to construct and function them, the WSJ mentioned.
After rising to prominence following the broadly publicized launch of ChatGPT, Altman’s fortunes have wavered in current months.
He was briefly fired from his place on the AI agency in November, solely to be rehired just a few days later after workers and traders rebelled.
Source: www.dailysabah.com