OpenAI has secured more than $6.5 billion in new funding at a valuation of $157 billion as it looks to increase its lead in the artificial intelligence space.

What Happened: OpenAI on Wednesday announced that it raised $6.6 billion at a post-money valuation of $157 billion to accelerate progress on AI research, increase compute capacity and continue building tools to solve complex problems. OpenAI was valued around $86 billion earlier this year when employees opted to offload existing shares.

"Across industries, businesses are improving productivity and operations, and developers are leveraging our platform to create a new generation of applications. And we're only getting started," the AI company said in a statement.

OpenAI's ChatGPT is the fastest-growing consumer application in history, as it was estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users within two months of launch. The company was seeing an average of about 13 million unique visitors per day at that time, per Reuters.

OpenAI said Wednesday that more than 250 million people across the globe are currently using ChatGPT daily to enhance their work, creativity and learning.

Why It Matters: According to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the matter, OpenAI's new funding deal is one of the largest private investments ever alongside SpaceX and TikTok parent ByteDance.

The funding was reportedly led by Thrive Capital. Previous reports suggested the venture capital firm would invest at least $1 billion. OpenAI was also reportedly in funding talks with Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT).

Apple ended up pulling out of discussions early, but separate reports suggested SoftBank was looking to step into the deal. Microsoft has been the main backer of OpenAI to date, having invested $13 billion in the AI company over the past five years.

• After Apple Reportedly Backed Out, SoftBank Eyes $500M Investment In ChatGPT Parent, Pushing Valuation To $150B

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