Why didn’t Apple invest in OpenAI’s $6.6 billion funding round?

OpenAI’s huge funding round has attracted notable backers including chip-maker Nvidia and further support from Microsoft. However, Apple opted out and there could be a good reason why. 

Adam Clark for Barron’s:

ChatGPT developer OpenAI told investors in the new round — which raised $6.6 billion — that it doesn’t want them to put money into its biggest private competitors, according to The Wall Street Journal.

OpenAI’s principal private competitors include Anthropic, which was founded by several ex-OpenAI employees; Safe Superintelligence, which was co-founded by OpenAI’s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever; and Elon Musk’s xAI.

It is an interesting request from OpenAI and might explain why Apple was reported last month to have pulled out of talks to join in the investment round. Apple is setting up its iPhone as a neutral platform for various artificial-intelligence companies to offer their services to its huge base of customers and might want to keep its options open for partnerships. 


MacDailyNews Take: Indeed. In addition to OpenAI, AI startups Anthropic and Perplexity also have been in discussions with Apple to bring their generative AI to Apple Intelligence, The Wall Street Journal reported in June citing “people familiar with the talks.”

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