Apple and Nvidia may invest money in OpenAI.

According to sources from the NYT, Apple and Nvidia are in negotiations with OpenAI to invest in the world’s most famous AI language model startup at this time. Unofficial information suggests that if the negotiation process is successful, OpenAI’s market capitalization could reach 100 billion USD.
Leading this investment round will be Thrive Capital, and there is a strong possibility that Microsoft will invest more in OpenAI, following the previous $13 billion investment the company made in OpenAI. Thrive Capital itself will also invest 1 billion USD in this artificial intelligence research startup.
Just 8 months ago, the market value of OpenAI was still estimated at 80 billion USD.
In recent months, it has become evident that investors’ interest in AI technology has somewhat cooled off. Just a year ago, every investment fund was looking for ways to pour capital into startups focused on developing AI-related products, from language models to specialized processing chips designed to accelerate the operation of those very language models.
But by now, quite a few startups like that have been swallowed up by major tech corporations in various forms. Or they invest money in a startup and then lure away the personnel to work for them, leaving the startup with unselected staff to fend for themselves. Less harshly, the corporation invested a large sum to completely acquire that startup, bringing all personnel back to focus on product research and development, in exchange for concerns that they might be investigated for antitrust violations due to exploiting the scale of the corporation to manipulate the market.
As of now, OpenAI is still operating as an independent entity with two branches: non-profit research and service operations, selling APIs to partners for revenue. Since 2019, Microsoft and other entities have invested tens of billions of dollars into this startup, through both cash solutions and the processing power of data centers to support OpenAI in building next-generation large language models.
Nvidia is indeed the main provider of specialized server chips for research, training, and AI processing tasks. In the past year and a half, thanks to the demand for data center chips, Nvidia has experienced rapid growth in terms of revenue, profit, and the company’s market capitalization. Last Wednesday, they announced the financial report, showing a 122% increase in revenue compared to the same period in 2023.
Earlier this year, it was Thrive Capital that led a funding round for OpenAI, helping the startup achieve a valuation of $80 billion.
Earlier, Bloomberg also provided unofficial information about Nvidia potentially investing in OpenAI. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Apple wants to invest in OpenAI.
Speaking specifically about Apple. If Google, Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI are leading the race in AI technology development, then Apple seems to be falling behind. In June, at WWDC 2024, Apple announced Apple Intelligence with generative AI features aimed at enhancing the user experience on its computers and phones. Coming up on September 10th, according to Vietnam time, Apple will have an event to introduce new products. It is expected that both the iPhone 16 series and details about Apple Intelligence features will be introduced in more detail at this event.