As the global AI revolution deepens, it should come as no surprise that OpenAI has surpassed Elon Musk’s SpaceX as the highest-valued private company based in the United States. The Microsoft-backed AI company accomplished this after its latest funding round.
During that round, the company was able to raise $6.6 billion in funds and took the company to a valuation of $157 billion, making it the third highest-valued startup in the world.
OpenAI said in a statement that “the new funding will allow them to double down the company’s leadership in AI research, increase computing capacity, and build tools that help people solve hard problems.”
The company was trailing ByteDance, who owns TikTok, and SpaceX before inevitably overtaking the latter as the top US-based private firm.
OpenAI will continue to push the AI frontier, as SpaceX will push space exploration into the future
At the moment, both companies are at the vanguard of their respective fields. SpaceX continues to revolutionize space exploration, with their end game being putting humans on Mars, whilst OpenAI will continue to fuel the AI revolution with apps like ChatGPT and DALL-E, which improve every day.
SpaceX currently has a valuation of $125 billion, according to several investing firms, which is still a very considerable valuation. Despite these astronomical valuations, both OpenAI and SpaceX pale in comparison to China’s ByteDance, which owns TikTok.
The Chinese company is valued at a staggering $220 billion, which is why the trial that is currently going on in the United States is so crucial, as it could force a split or hinder its valuation severely.
This should put into perspective how powerful social media is, even in the midst of an AI revolution.
OpenAI is in a league of its own when compared to other AI startups
OpenAI is no doubt one of the more mainstream artificial intelligence startups, largely thanks to its widely accessible chatbot, ChatGPT. However other AI companies that have similar apps have not been able to achieve the same level of success or valuations.
For instance, XAI, which was also founded by Elon Musk and is a direct competitor to OpenAI, is only valued at $24 billion. The two closest other AI startups to this valuation, are Scale AI from San Francisco at $14 billion and the French-based Mistral AI which is valued at $6 billion. Despite their astronomical valuations, all of these AI startups do not compare to OpenAI’s $157 billion valuation.
Notably, however, OpenAI was originally branded as a not-for-profit company, but it has recently hired Sarah Friar as its chief financial officer. This is a move that is usually done by companies who are looking to go public, which experts say is where OpenAI is headed.