First Musk balked at following through on a pledged $1 billion for OpenAI, insisting on control and effectively holding Altman and his team "hostage." So Altman went looking for a white knight. Khosla calls Musk a "great entrepreneur" but recalls that, "it seems like he wanted it like a private fiefdom with him in charge."
Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. OpenAI says that it has taken an undisclosed ownership stake in Thrive Holdings, the management-focused offshoot of private equity heavyweight Thrive Capital, which itself is a major investor in the ChatGPT maker. "This partnership with Thrive Holdings is about demonstrating what's possible when frontier AI research and deployment are rapidly deployed across entire organizations to revolutionize how businesses work and engage with customers," Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI said, according to a canned statement that accompanied the news.
SoftBank Group has liquidated its complete stake in Nvidia for $5.8 billion, the company announced during a presentation for investors early Tuesday morning, instead redirecting capital toward OpenAI as part of a strategic pivot that underscores both the company's bullish conviction on AI and CEO Masayoshi Son's willingness to place massive, high-stakes bets on emerging tech. Nvidia stock fell 2% shortly after the opening bell.
