Investors are so horny for AI that they’ve invested $175mn in OpenAI’s VC fund

Ground zero for the current AI mania — ChatGPT parent OpenAI — might be owned by a non-profit, but it’s shown some serious human intelligence in finding ways to squeeze money out of the hype it has helped stir.

The main way was obviously a complicated $10bn investment from Microsoft, but that was over multiple years and mostly paid for with computing power to fuel its chatty bots, rather than cold hard cash.

Here is the latest wheeze, according a filing it made with the SEC yesterday (HT The Information who spotted it first):

Per the filing, OpenAI has now raised $175,250,000 from 14 investors for its fund to invest in start-ups, compared with an initial target of $100mn when it launched (with Microsoft backing) in 2021.

The pitch is presumably that investors gagging for exposure to AI can hand their money to the sexiest company in the industry to do it on their behalf. The Information notes that OpenAI has already told potential investors that another VC fund is in the works.

Of course, the history of venture capital-backed start-ups starting their own venture capital arms isn’t exactly encouraging. Sam Altman’s side project Worldcoin — which wants to pay everyone in the world in crypto to let it scan their eyeballs — is just plain 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 going nuts and immediately raising a $100bn Saudi-backed venture fund. And at least OpenAI is raising a fund on the back of something more tangible than a podcast.