Anonymous personOpenAI has revealed that it received nearly $6.6 billion in investment from global investors, while also requiring its investors not to fund competitors also developing large language models. The list includes companies such as Anthropic and xAI, which has made Musk very angry.
OpenAI’s exclusive funding agreement: Requiring investors to no longer invest in competing companies such as Anthropic and xAI
According to foreign media reportsAn anonymous source revealed that after OpenAI received $6.6 billion in investment from global investors such as Thrive Capital and Tiger Global, it asked investors for an “exclusive funding agreement,” hoping that after investing in OpenAI, they would not invest in five other competitors. These five include Anthropic, Musk’s xAI, OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever’s new company Safe Superintelligence (SSI), AI search engine Perplexity, and enterprise search company Glean. Among them, Anthropic, xAI, and SSI are all competing with OpenAI in developing large language models.
The first three companies also have direct competitive relationships with OpenAI. Perplexity and Glean are AI applications, not companies developing large language models, but they were also placed on OpenAI’s no-investment list. Foreign media speculate that this may be because OpenAI plans to sell more tools to enterprises and end users in the future. If we follow this line of reasoning, then it becomes clear why OpenAI also has two developer conferences on 10/30 and 11/21.It might be that by then, they’ll be releasing tools or features that compete with Perplexity and Glean.
Although OpenAI’s exclusive funding agreement isn’t legally binding, it still shows just how much capital is needed in AI research and development, and OpenAI is now looking for ways to leverage its own appeal to demand loyalty from investors. However, this exclusive funding agreement only applies to current and future investors—Microsoft, which has already invested in OpenAI in the past, isn’t covered. Since Microsoft has invested in Musk’s xAI in addition to OpenAI, OpenAI probably can’t exactly tell Microsoft not to invest in xAI, right?
Regarding reports that OpenAI required investors to sign exclusive funding agreements, it’s unclear what stance other companies have taken, but xAI’s boss Elon Musk is clearly very unhappy, saying twice in a row that “OpenAI is evil.”
What does everyone think about OpenAI attempting to use funding agreements to restrict investors from investing in competitors? This kind of strategy is not uncommon in the business world, but when it comes to innovation and technological competition, such behavior could trigger some negative reactions. With two developer conferences approaching, we’ll see whether OpenAI will roll out more innovative tools and how these moves will impact the development of the entire AI industry.
Source: KOCPC Chinese