OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman Working with Middle Eastern investors andchipManufacturer TSMC discusses launching a new chip businessAccording to people familiar with the matter, this is to meet the company's growing demand for semiconductors while reducing itsNvidiaof dependence.
Altman has discussed with some of the region’s wealthiest investors about funding an ambitious new project to develop the chips needed to train and build AI models, as well as the factories needed to manufacture them.
The 38-year-old entrepreneur is in talks with investors in the United Arab Emirates, including one of Abu Dhabi's richest and most influential figures, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, to finance the venture.
He also held discussions with TSMC about collaborating on manufacturing chips.
OpenAI and TSMC refuse toabsoluteSheikh Tahnoon could not immediately be reached for comment. Bloomberg News first reported that Altman was in talks with Middle Eastern investors about a chip partnership.
Sheikh Tahnoon is one of the most powerful figures in the UAE, the brother of the Gulf state's president, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, and national security adviser. He also oversees a rapidly expanding business empire and chairs Abu Dhabi's most powerful state investment fund.
These include the $800 billion Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and ADQ, another state investment entity. He also serves as chairman of the International Holding Company, a fast-growing UAE holding company.maximumA sprawling conglomerate of publicly traded companies, and chairman of ambitious AI company G42, which has partnerships with Microsoft and OpenAI.
It’s unclear how much money Altman is seeking to raise for his new venture, but designing and developing chips is a very expensive undertaking, and trying to compete with Nvidia, which has a market value of nearly $1.5 trillion, could cost billions of dollars.
Chips have become the hottest commodity among Silicon Valley startups and established technology companies elsewhere over the past year, giving a handful of leading chipmakers a “strong hand” in the race for AI supremacy.KingMaker" role.
Increasingly powerful semiconductors, especially Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs), have become the cornerstone of the artificial intelligence revolution.
OpenAI and other leading companies rely on tens of thousands of chips to train and run their large language models, and competition for GPUs is fierce. The supply of semiconductors is tightly controlled by a few large companies.
OpenAI is working on a new version of its AI model, which is expected to be released this year and will be its firstup to dateEach model upgrade makes the company more dependent on its partners’ chips.
It’s not clear whether Altman’s chip venture will be managed as a subsidiary of OpenAI or as a separate entity. OpenAI will be a major customer of the new company, according to two people familiar with the plans.
Last November, Altman was dramatically removed as CEO of OpenAI, which he co-founded in 2015, for failing to be “consistently candid” with its board. After employees and investors revolted against the decision, Altman was able to return to his post within a week.