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OpenAI CEO Reportedly Seeking Funds for Purpose-built Chip Foundries

T0@st

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OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, had a turbulent winter 2023 career moment, but appears to be going all in with his company's future interests. A Bloomberg report suggests that the tech visionary has initiated a major fundraising initiative for the construction of OpenAI-specific semiconductor production plants. The AI evangelist reckons that his industry will become prevalent enough to demand a dedicated network of manufacturing facilities—the U.S. based artificial intelligence (AI) research organization is (reportedly) exploring custom artificial intelligence chip designs. Proprietary AI-focused GPUs and accelerators are not novelties at this stage in time—many top tech companies rely on NVIDIA solutions, but are keen to deploy custom-built hardware in the near future.

OpenAI's popular ChatGPT system is reliant on NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, but tailor-made alternatives seem to be the desired route for Altman & Co. The "on their own terms" pathway seemingly skips an expected/traditional chip manufacturing process—the big foundries could struggle to keep up with demand for AI-oriented silicon. G42 (an Abu Dhabi-based AI development holding company) and SoftBank Group are mentioned as prime investment partners in OpenAI's fledgling scheme—Bloomberg proposes that Altman's team is negotiating a $8 to 10 billion deal with top brass at G42. OpenAI's planned creation of its own foundry network is certainly a lofty and costly goal—the report does not specify whether existing facilities will be purchased and overhauled, or new plants being constructed entirely from scratch.



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Haha, the biggest douche in AI wants partners to screw later?
 
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If the idea were to develop proprietary ASICs, I would say that seems reasonable and logical. But... chip foundries? This decision seems reckless on several fronts, it leads me to question how this guy founded this company. The probability of successfully establishing a chip factory without infringing existing patents seems extremely low, not to mention the cost of "just trying to do it"

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^^Aye, TSMC has had no problems building the wafers for Tesla's DOJO D1.
 
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Haha, the biggest douche in AI wants partners to screw later?
Exactly this, but in the grand sceme of things, just another corpo a*sehole chasing the money.
 
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Did something get lost in translation at some point? Chip foundries sounds very weird, did he mean in house designed chips to be ordered from existing foundries? :wtf:
 
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