Altman's Hunt For OpenAI Capital Continues, Sparks Talks With Singapore's Temasek

Singapore state-owned investment firm Temasek is in talks with artificial intelligence (AI) developer OpenAI about investing in the company.

The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that executives at Temasek — one of the world’s largest state-owned investors — have had several rounds of discussions with OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman in recent months.

Citing sources familiar with the discussions, the FT said Temasek, which has an asset portfolio worth $287 billion, was initially interested in investing in Hydrazine Capital, Altman’s venture capital fund, but recent talks included the possibility of investing in OpenAI.

Benzinga contacted both Temasek and OpenAI for comment. Temasek replied saying that “as a matter of policy, we decline to comment on market speculation.”

OpenAI Chip Manufacturing Project

If true, the talks come as Altman seeks funds to contribute to the global semiconductor manufacturing output. To this end, he has already been in talks with Middle East sovereign wealth funds, as reported last month by Benzinga.

The ambitious project proposed by Altman would likely cost in the region of $7 trillion and he is reportedly seeking support from U.S. government officials to boost global chip capacity in anticipation of an expected boom in demand from AI development and deployment.

Altman wrote on X last month: “We believe the world needs more AI infrastructure — fab capacity, energy, datacenters, etc — than people are currently planning to build.

“Building massive-scale AI infrastructure, and a resilient supply chain, is crucial to economic competitiveness. OpenAI will try to help.”

Microsoft Corporation MSFT is currently OpenAI’s biggest investor with around $13 billion of backing. But a number of venture capital groups have invested smaller amounts in the company, including Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.

Also Read: TSMC, Samsung Lead Recovery In Asia’s Emerging Markets With AI And Chip Sector Growth

OpenAI’s Complex Structure

Despite, or because of, the scrutiny of global regulators, Microsoft has repeatedly said it has no interest in owning or controlling OpenAI. Yet its large investment ensures Microsoft exclusive license to OpenAI’s intellectual property, excluding generative AI (GenAI) deployments the company may eventually make.

Thus, what a potentially large investment from a sovereign wealth fund or other state-backed mega-fund might mean for OpenAI’s ownership structure remains a mystery.

And, while Microsoft’s investment entitles it to a share of OpenAI’s earnings, the huge revenue growth seen at the company seen since the launch of ChatGPT, still hasn’t generated profit due to the massive development costs.

This is another reason why the company would like to build a chipmaking infrastructure to become less reliant on expensive processing equipment from companies such as Nvidia Corporation NVDA, whose graphics processing units (GPUs) it mainly uses on its large language model systems.

Now Read: Sam Altman Seeks Biden’s Help For OpenAI’s $7 Trillion AI Chipmaking Dream

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