The deal, according to a report from Semafor is part of a funding round with other investors involved that would value OpenAI at $29 billion. Although ,its not clear if the deal has been finalized , term sheets sent to prospective investors showed that, the plan was to close the deal by the end of 2022. As part of the deal, Microsoft will reportedly get a 75% share of OpenAI’s profits until it makes back the money on its investment, after which the company would assume a 49% stake in OpenAI. OpenAI was founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sam Altman in 2015 and launched its ChatGPT to the public in late November. The ChatGPT tool which is currently free to use has gone viral for its ability to help people write essays, emails, poems, and even computer code. Since its debut in December last year, people have been using it to compose music, understand complex topics, make jokes, write movie scripts, and even debug computer codes. Its popularity soared within days as it recorded its first 1 million users within 5 days of its launch. Investing into ChatGPT could help Microsoft boost its efforts in web search market which is dominated by Google. The company’s Bing browser has only a small share of the global search engine market, however it is hoped the deal could help the firm chip away at Google’s dominance by offering more advanced search capabilities. OpenAI has also announced that it is considering monetizing the AI tool in a bid to ensure longtime sustainability. The monetized version of ChatGPT will be called ChatGPT Professional. The benefits of the professional ChatGPT will include no “blackout”, meaning that the platform will always be available, unlike the current free version. Also, there will be no throttling even as users will have an unlimited number of messages with ChatGPT. OpenAI says that those who fill out the waitlist form on its Discord server may be selected to pilot ChatGPT Professional. It, however, noted that the product is in its experimental stages and won’t be made widely available “at this time.”
