💸 That's $29 BILLION with a B

OpenAI gets a VALUATION, Apple is so AI, and tool of the day

Author

Kyle Scott
January 06, 2023

Well, no sense in beating beneath the bush*: the big ballyhoo today is the ~$300 million share purchase offer that would value OpenAI at $29 billion with a B 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝.

*that sounds very dirty

💸 Shares For Sale

  • OpenAI, which created Dall-E and ChatGPT, is reportedly in talks to sell existing shares in a tender offer, which means investors would buy shares from current shareholders such as employees

  • The offer would value the company at around $29 billion

  • The offer is being led by venture-capital firms Thrive Capital and Founders Fund, and could total at least $300 million in OpenAI share sales

  • The deal is still in the negotiation phase and has not yet been finalized

  • OpenAI has generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue from selling its AI software to developer

  • In 2021, OpenAI completed a tender offer that valued the company at around $14 billion-- If the current deal goes through, it would roughly double this valuation (MATH)

IN SHORT BUT BIG AND BOLD TEXT: Employees want to cash out and VCs are happy to take this bet on a potentially Trillion with a T company.

More: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has never looked more Bezos than he does in this WSJ photo...

... said the company could soon generate billions in revenue, either by charging customers to use its tools-- Dall-E can be tried for free and ChatGPT is fully free but both use a prohibitively costly amount of computational power.

A lot developing here, but OpenAI has bucked the no-froth trend destroying growth markets around the world.

Do we worry about another tech darling CEO being named Sam? No? Just me? OK.

🍎 AppleAI

This Tweet from OG tech blogger Robert Scobel kicked off my New Year with a 💥 (I'm a loser):

Feels like he knows something.

Sure enough, three days later, Apple - which is not known to #buildinpublic - releases a standalone AI feature which automatically generates audiobooks for titles that don't have a recorded version:

  • Apple Books is inviting independent writers and publishers to opt-in to have their written books converted into audio form using AI voice synthesis models

  • Books are narrated by specific AI voices depending on their genre, and the transformation into an AI-narrated audiobook is done on a wholly opt-in basis

OK, OK, I know what you're thinking-- that's not what Apple's fancy M2 chip is for.

Correct.

But Apple doesn't do trends. Meaning they didn't cook this up in a 3-day pizza-fueled meeting last month after they saw the smashing success of ChatGPT's launch.

I enjoy Apple going out of their way to not include the term "AI" or "artificial" in their press release announcing... wait for it... their new AI tool. Only Apple.

Still, this certainly seems part of a larger plan that involves AI.

Scobel thinks an AI powered Siri is coming this year.

Audiobooks may be just the start.

🔨 Tool of the Day

Why I like it so much: It just saves you time. It's not generative AI and it won't converse with you. But it does a shockingly good job of scraping and monitoring web pages for data and changes.

What can it be used for?

  • aggregating data

  • monitoring price changes

  • keeping up on what your competitor is doing

  • pulling long lists of products, downloading them into a CSV, and importing it to your website

There is such a delightful feeling when it just does what you want.

Anyway, Browse AI is very good. You can try it and get 10% off here.

🔥Oh yeah, we're live

Nearly 300 of the latest AI tools categorized for you.

Much more to come.