OpenAI's large chip purchase letter of intent revealed! Supplier company's shareholder is actually Ultraman
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Update time : 2024-01-04 09:47:17
OpenAI is looking for a more stable supply of AI chips, and on its procurement list, a startup owned by OpenAI CEO Altman is expected to be a key supplier after NVIDIA.
Comprehensive reports from several tech media outlets indicate that OpenAI signed a non-binding letter of intent with chip developer Rain AI in 2019 to spend $51 million on the latter's products after its chips hit the market. And while Altman provided Rain with a seed round of funding in 2018, Rain has revealed that Altman has invested more than $1 million in it. In addition to Altman, among Rain's investors is Saudi Aramco's Prosperity 7. However, Prosperity 7 recently cleared its stake in Rain due to mandates from the U.S. government.Rain had announced in early 2022 that Prosperity 7 led a $25 million funding round. The investor filing said Rain could deliver its first chips to customers as early as next October. Earlier this year, Rain also said it expects to conduct flow testing, simply known as pilot production, a key process in chip development, as soon as December.The chip under development at Rain is a chip called a neuromorphic processing unit (NPU), inspired by the structure of the human brain. According to the company, the chip will require less power than the NVIDIA GPU chips currently used in the industry, and will allow companies to customize or fine-tune AI models in real time based on their surroundings. These features are highly attractive to OpenAI, which wants to reduce data center costs and deploy its models into devices such as phones and watches, people familiar with the matter said. Currently, OpenAI utilizes the cloud services of its main investor, Microsoft, to provide AI services, but due to hardware limitations, it has had to shut down access portals during periods of high traffic.OpenAI's lock-in to the Rain chip somewhat underscores the chip dilemma facing the AI industry. Altman himself has complained about the supply crunch and coveted profits on top of AI chips. In addition, the Rain deal also reflects the same tie between OpenAI and Altman's portfolio companies. One of the previous speculations about Altman's ouster amidst OpenAI's courtroom drama had to do with his personal investments. It has been suggested that Altman blurred the lines between his role as OpenAI's CEO and his personal investment business, and was thus deemed by OpenAI's board of directors to be lacking in integrity. Other people familiar with the matter have added to this analysis, claiming that Altman's energies were spread too thin, thus triggering the OpenAI board's displeasure.
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