ChatGPT maker OpenAI negotiates with Microsoft to facilitate new funding, IPO: FT report

Sam Altman's OpenAI is renegotiating a multibillion-dollar deal with Microsoft to allow the ChatGPT maker an IPO in the future, while protecting the software giant's access to cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) models, Financial Times reported.

Microsoft is OpenAI’s largest backer with an investment of over $13 billion, and a key holdout in the latter's efforts to restructure into a for-profit company from a non-profit. A critical issue in the negotiations is how much equity Microsoft will hold in the restructured OpenAI.

The original contract was signed in 2019 and ends in 2030, with intellectual property (IP) access, product rights, and revenue share under its purview. The two companies are revising the terms of this broader contract, FT reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter.


Microsoft may surrender some equity in exchange for continued access to OpenAI’s tech beyond 2030, the report said.

OpenAI restructuring

The negotiations are critical to OpenAI's efforts to restructure. Last week, the AI forerunner scrapped its plan to emerge from the control of its non-profit board. However, it still intends to become a public benefit corporation, an entity focussed on social betterment along with making profits. Rivals Anthropic and Elon Musk's xAI have adopted this model, which would allow OpenAI to offer equity to investors. The transformation is a key demand of investors and would ensure that an IPO is possible in future, a person close to the company told FT.

The restructuring is critical to Altman's goal of developing artificial general intelligence, which will surpass human intelligence, as well as accessing future funding and competing with tech giants like Google.

Strained ties

OpenAI and Microsoft remain close collaborators, with the latter embedding former's technology in its software products, while providing it with huge amounts of computing power to train AI models.

But OpenAI's "arrogance" of asking for money and compute power while excluding Microsoft from strategic decisions has strained relations, a senior employees at the software giant told FT.

Despite the friction, Microsoft still supports the restructuring deal, though negotiations are tense.