Japanese investment group SoftBank has approved a second tranche of $22.5 billion to complete its investment in OpenAI, bringing its total investment to $30 billion. reports The Information.
SoftBank’s board of directors has decided to pay the funds on the condition that OpenAI completes a corporate restructuring that will pave the way for a possible public offering of shares, the publication was told by a source familiar with the situation. The new funding will supplement the $41 billion investment package already announced in April.
SoftBank agreed to provide $10 billion in April and another $30 billion in December, provided that OpenAI transitions to a commercial management structure by the end of the year. At the same time, SoftBank warned that if the restructuring fails, the amount of investment will be reduced to $20 billion.
Recall that this year, OpenAI’s agreements to lease computing capacity exceeded $1 trillion – obligations that exceed its revenue several times and raise questions about its sources of financing. According to the agreements, OpenAI will receive more than 20 gigawatts of computing power over the next ten years – this is approximately equivalent to the energy efficiency of 20 nuclear reactors.
According to OpenAI management, 1 gigawatt of power for artificial intelligence currently costs about $50 billion, so the total cost of such resources is about $1 trillion.
