OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has been working to raise billions of dollars from global investors for a chip venture, aims to use the funds to set up a network of factories to manufacture semiconductors, several sources with knowledge of the plans said.
Altman has had conversations with several large potential investors in the hopes of raising the vast sums needed for chip fabs, they said.
Firms that have held discussions with Altman include Abu Dhabi-based G42, sources told Bloomberg last month, with another named firm being Softbank Group Corp, some of them added.
Photo: AFP
The project would involve working with top chip manufacturers, and the network of fabs would be global in scope, they said.
While efforts to raise funds for a chip venture were earlier reported by Bloomberg, the scope of the project and the focus on manufacturing were not previously known. The talks are still early and a full list of involved partners and funders has not been established, the sources said.
Altman’s fundraising push reflects his concern that as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more pervasive, there would not be enough chips for widespread deployment, some of the sources said. Some current forecasts for the production of AI-related chips fall short of projected demand.
Building and maintaining fabs that manufacture semiconductors is far more expensive than the approach favored by many of OpenAI’s industry peers. Amazon.com Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Microsoft Corp — OpenAI’s largest investor — typically focus on designing their own custom silicon and then farm out manufacturing to outside companies.
Constructing a single state-of-the-art fab could require tens of billions of dollars, and creating a network of such facilities would take years. The talks with G42 alone had focused on raising US$8 billion to US$10 billion, sources told Bloomberg previously, although the status of the discussions remains unclear.
Altman believes the industry needs to act now to ensure that there is sufficient supply near the end of the decade, sources familiar with his thinking said.
Since OpenAI released ChatGPT more than a year ago, interest in AI applications has skyrocketed among companies and consumers. That in turn has spurred massive demand for the computing power and processors needed to build and run those AI programs. Altman has said repeatedly that there are not enough chips for his company’s needs.
Intel Corp, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co lead the chip fabrication market and are potential partners for OpenAI.
Altman had been hard at work on the chips project until he was temporarily ousted as OpenAI CEO in November last year. Upon his return, he rekindled the efforts. Altman has also sounded out Microsoft on the plan, and the software giant is interested, two sources said.
Meanwhile, G42 has been the subject of calls this month by a key US lawmaker for greater scrutiny and trade restrictions.
US House China Select Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher, a Republican from Wisconsin, raised concerns about G42’s relationships with blacklisted Chinese companies including Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Beijing Genomics Institute, as well as risks to research at US universities. Gallagher urged US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo to consider sanctions on G42 and 13 of its subsidiaries and affiliates.
TECH BOOST: New TSMC wafer fabs in Arizona are to dramatically improve US advanced chip production, a report by market research firm TrendForce said With Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) pouring large funds into Arizona, the US is expected to see an improvement in its status to become the second-largest maker of advanced semiconductors in 2027, Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report last week. TrendForce estimates the US would account for a 21 percent share in the global advanced integrated circuit (IC) production market by 2027, sharply up from the current 9 percent, as TSMC is investing US$65 billion to build three wafer fabs in Arizona, the report said. TrendForce defined the advanced chipmaking processes as the 7-nanometer process or more
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
Who would not want a social media audience that grows without new content? During the three years she paused production of her short do-it-yourself (DIY) farmer’s lifestyle videos, Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi (李子柒), 34, has seen her YouTube subscribers increase to 20.2 million from about 14 million. While YouTube is banned in China, her fan base there — although not the size of YouTube’s MrBeast, who has 330 million subscribers — is close to 100 million across the country’s social media platforms Douyin (抖音), Sina Weibo (新浪微博) and Xiaohongshu (小紅書). When Li finally released new videos last week — ending what has
OPEN SCIENCE: International collaboration on math and science will persevere even if the incoming Trump administration imposes strict controls, Nvidia’s CEO said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said on Saturday that global cooperation in technology would continue even if the incoming US administration imposes stricter export controls on advanced computing products. US president-elect Donald Trump, in his first term in office, imposed restrictions on the sale of US technology to China citing national security — a policy continued under US President Joe Biden. The curbs forced Nvidia, the world’s leading maker of chips used for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, to change its product lineup in China. The US chipmaking giant last week reported record-high quarterly revenue on the back of strong AI chip
RSS