OpenAI has recently requested its investors to refrain from funding five specific AI startups, including Safe Superintelligence (SSI), founded by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever. The news comes after OpenAI successfully raised $6.6 billion from Thrive Capital and Tiger Global, marking its valuation to a staggering $157 billion.
The startups that are targeted by OpenAI's request are close competitors in the development of large language models (LLMs). The list includes rival AI companies such as Anthropic and Elon Musk's xAI, along with Perplexity and Glean. It looks like OpenAI wants to consolidate its market position as it anticipates revenue growth, with projections reaching from $3.7 billion this year to $11.6 billion by 2025.
While the request is not legally binding, it tells us how OpenAI is desperate to leverage its appeal among investors in a highly competitive field where capital access is critical. Although such practices are not entirely uncommon in venture capital, making a specific list of competitors is relatively unusual. This not-so-usual request can potentially affect both OpenAI's investors and the future of these listed AI startups that are its competitors.
Notably, OpenAI's Charter, which outlines its commitment to ensuring the building of a safe AGI that benefits all of humanity, pledges to assist any other organization that reaches AGI if they're able to do so before OpenAI does. The Charter explicitly states that OpenAI will attempt to build safe and beneficial AGI directly, but if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before it does, it will cease competing and instead offer assistance.
The specific conditions for this collaboration would be determined on a case-by-case basis. Still, a typical scenario could involve a project demonstrating a "better-than-even chance of success in the next two years."
OpenAI's request that investors not fund other AI startups contrasts sharply with its Charter's principles. As the company transitions from a nonprofit structure to a for-profit benefit corporation, such unusual requests raise questions about whether it will really adhere to its original principles about building AGI for the benefit of humanity.
Via Reuters
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