- Former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was reportedly seeking billions in funding for a new company when he was fired.
- According to Bloomberg, Altman was raising funds to build a rival to AI chipmaker Nvidia.
- The report shows that talks with investors are still at an early stage and the project has not been formalized yet.
Former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was reportedly seeking billions in funding for a new chip company before he was ousted.
Bloomberg reported that Altman he was raising funds in the Middle East for a new venture aimed at competing with AI chipmaker Nvidia.
Altmans’ goal was to provide Nvidia with cheaper competition and reduce the cost of running OpenAI services such as ChatGPT, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The project was reportedly intended to compete with AI chip giant Nvidia, which controls about 80% of the global AI chip market.
OpenAI, like other companies investing in generative artificial intelligence, is facing a brutal shortage of processors. Altman previously said that OpenAI, which relied on its partner Microsoft for the massive computing power required to run its artificial intelligence models, would “never rule out” building your own AI chips.
Talks with investors are still at an early stage and the project, codenamed Tigris, has not yet been launched, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
There is no evidence that the proposed project had anything to do with Altman being forced out of OpenAI. Technology developers often work on multiple ventures at once, and Altman has led several other projects with OpenAI.
The former CEO was also launching his eyeball-scanning cryptocurrency project Worldcoin and raising VC funding for a new venture focused on heavy technique, – informed Semaphore.
It’s still unclear why OpenAI’s board suddenly fired Altman on Friday. OpenAI’s new CEO, Emmett Shear, appears to be confused as to why the previous CEO was fired. Neither does Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, which is the largest investor in OpenAI.
OpenAI representatives did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment made outside normal business hours.
