Artificial Intelligence Giant OpenAI Raises Billions, Sets Unique Investment Rule

OpenAI, the AI company co-founded by Elon Musk, has just scored a massive $6.6 billion in funding. This puts its value at an astonishing $157 billion, making it the priciest startup on the planet. The investors? Big names like Thrive Capital, Microsoft, and Nvidia. But here's where things get interesting: OpenAI asked these investors not to back its rivals. That's right, they wanted an exclusive deal.

The list of competitors is no joke: Perplexity, Glean, Anthropic, Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence, and even Musk's own xAI, which developed Grok. Musk didn't hold back his thoughts on Twitter, calling OpenAI "evil." This isn't the first time Musk has criticized the company. He's called them out before for lack of transparency and not sticking to their safety promises. Now, asking investors not to fund rivals isn't unheard of. Companies like Uber and Lyft did something similar before going public. But it's still a big ask. Some of OpenAI's own investors have already backed other AI startups. Take SoftBank, for example. They've been investing heavily in hardware and software after some tough pre-pandemic bets, like WeWork.

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