Sam Altman continues his fundraising tour, with the idea of benefiting from his own production capacities for semiconductors. And he could well receive crazy amounts of money!
If ChatGPT fascinated the entire planet last year, its development to new heights will require OpenAI to benefit from much larger infrastructures. And for that, it will need more and more very high-level semiconductors. This has pushed Sam Altman for several months to no longer want to simply depend on firms like Nvidia, but also to develop its own production capacities in the field. A project that will require a lot, a lot of money!
Sam Altman looking for a colossal sum
At least in January, we learned that Sam Altman was touring large investment funds and electronics giants to raise funds, in order to be able to bring his own semiconductor manufacturing equipment into the world.
An already ambitious project, but which would in fact turn out to be even more disproportionate than expected. Indeed, according to information obtained by the Wall Street Journalthe 30-year-old could raise a total of a totally crazy sum ranging between 5,000 and 7,000 billion dollars!
Demand for semiconductors will only increase
These figures are all the more impressive given that OpenAI is currently only valued at around $80 billion. What Sam Altman is setting in motion is unique in the private investment sector. Its objective is to connect investors, energy suppliers and chip manufacturers to, together, be able to produce semiconductors.
And OpenAI should need it in the future. The firm is not the only one to report very strong needs for advanced chips, in a very constrained market. Meta, for example, also wants to produce some of its chips. More generally, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) forecasts that global semiconductor sales will increase by 13.1% in 2024, to reach $595.3 billion. Last year they recorded a drop of 8%.
Source : Reuters
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