OpenAI has tapped global banks for a $4 billion revolving line of credit on top of its recent $6.6 billion fundraising, building a massive war chest to stay ahead in the costly race to develop more sophisticated artificial intelligence.
In a statement Thursday announcing the credit facility, the company wrote, “This means we now have access to over $10 billion in liquidity, which gives us the flexibility to invest in new initiatives and operate with full agility as we scale.”
The company said it worked with JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and several other banks on the credit line.
“We have really big aspirations of, how do we keep investing and what drives this technology?” Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said on CNBC on Thursday. “It’s compute first, and it’s not cheap. It’s great talent second. And then, of course, it’s all the normal operating expenses of a more traditional company.”
Bloomberg had previously reported OpenAI was in talks to raise billions in debt from banks in the form of a revolving credit facility.
On Wednesday, OpenAI said it had completed its latest funding round, bringing its valuation to $157 billion, making it one of the world’s largest startups. The deal was led by Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital, with participation from Microsoft Corp., the company’s largest investor, as well as Nvidia Corp., the chipmaker whose powerful processors are at the center of the AI boom.
OpenAI touched off a tech industry frenzy over AI with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, the chatbot capable of generating human-sounding text based on a few words of prompting. Since then, the company has been at the forefront of developing AI models as competition has intensified from both startups and established companies like Alphabet Inc.
The new financing comes at a volatile time for OpenAI. A year ago, the company briefly fired its Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman. In the aftermath, the company has remade its board, hired hundreds of new employees, and lost several key leaders, including co-founder Ilya Sutskever and Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati.
Other banks involved in the credit facility include Banco Santander SA, Wells Fargo & Co., Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc., UBS Group AG and HSBC Holdings Plc, the company said.
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