Investors are so excited about AI that they’ve invested $175 million in OpenAI’s VC fund

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Ground zero for the current AI craze – OpenAI parent ChatGPT – may be owned by a non-profitbut he showed serious human intelligence in finding ways to squeeze money out of the furore he helped stir up.

The main way was obviously a complicated $10 billion investment by Microsoft, but it lasted multiple years and mostly paid off computing power to power its talkative robotsrather than cold cash.

Here is the last wheeze, according to a storage done yesterday with the SEC (HT The information who noticed it first):

According to the filing, OpenAI has now raised $175.25 million from 14 investors for its fund to invest in startups, up from an initial goal of $100 million when launched (with support from Microsoft) in 2021.

The tone is presumably that investors seeking exposure to AI can hand their money over to the sexiest company in the industry to do it on their behalf. The information notes that OpenAI has already notified potential investors that another venture capital fund is in the works.

Of course, the story of venture capital-backed startups launching their own venture capital guns it’s not exactly encouraging. Sam Altman’s side project World currency – who wants to pay everyone in the world in cryptocurrencies to have their eyeballs scanned – is just creepy.

But given the scale of the current investor frenzy for anything with even the faintest whiff of AI, we should probably give OpenAI credit for not freaking out and immediately raising a Saudi-backed $100 billion venture fund. And at least OpenAI is raising money thanks to something more tangible than a podcasts.