OpenAI negotiates with Microsoft for new funding and future IPO, FT reports

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(Reuters) -OpenAI and Microsoft are rewriting terms of their multibillion-dollar partnership in a negotiation designed to allow the ChatGPT maker to launch a future IPO, while protecting the software giant’s access to cutting-edge AI models, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

A critical issue is how much equity in OpenAI’s new for-profit business Microsoft will receive in exchange for the more than $13 billion it has invested in the company to date, the report said. It said Microsoft is offering to give up some of its equity stake in exchange for access to new technology developed beyond the 2030 cutoff.

They are also revising terms of a wider contract, first drafted when Microsoft initially invested $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019, the report said.

Microsoft declined to comment on the report. OpenAI did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

OpenAI has told investors it will share a smaller fraction of revenue with its largest backer as it moves ahead with restructuring, The Information reported last week.

In January, Microsoft changed some terms of a deal with OpenAI after entering a joint venture with Oracle and Japan’s SoftBank Group to build up to $500 billion of new artificial intelligence data centers in the U.S.

(Reporting by Rhea Rose Abraham in Bengaluru; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise, Bill Berkrot and David Gregorio)