OpenAI Committed to Buying $51 Million of AI Chips From a Startup Backed by CEO Sam Altman
Sam Altman was reinstated soon after being fired as OpenAI CEO last month, but still stood to gain had the company continued to develop ChatGPT without him. During Altman’s tenure as CEO, OpenAI signed a letter of intent to spend $51 million on AI chips from a startup called Rain AI into which he has also invested personally.
Rain is based less than a mile from OpenAI’s headquarters in San Francisco and is working on a chip it calls a neuromorphic processing unit, or NPU, designed to replicate features of the human brain. OpenAI in 2019 signed a nonbinding agreement to spend $51 million on the chips when they became available, according to a copy of the deal and Rain disclosures to investors this year seen by WIRED. Rain told investors Altman had personally invested more than $1 million into the company. The letter of intent has not been previously reported.
The investor documents said that Rain could get its first hardware to customers as early as October next year. OpenAI and Rain declined to comment.
OpenAI’s letter of intent with Rain shows how Altman’s web of personal investments can entangle with his duties as OpenAI CEO. His prior position leading startup incubator Y Combinator helped Altman become one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent dealmakers, investing in dozens of startups and acting as a broker between entrepreneurs and the world’s biggest companies. But the distraction and intermingling of his myriad pursuits played some role in his recent firing by OpenAI’s board for uncandid communications, according to people involved in the situation but not authorized to discuss it.
The Rain deal also underscores OpenAI’s willingness to spend large sums to secure supplies of chips needed to underpin pioneering AI projects. Altman has complained publicly of a “brutal crunch” for AI chips and their “eye-watering” costs. OpenAI taps the powerful cloud of Microsoft, its primary investor, but has regularly shut off access to features of ChatGPT due to hardware constraints. According to a blog post about a closed door meeting he held with developers, Altman has said the pace of AI progress may be dependent on new chip designs and supply chains.
Rain touted its progress to potential investors earlier this year, projecting that as soon as this month it could “tape out” a test chip, a standard milestone in chip development referring to a design ready for fabrication. But the startup also has recently reshuffled its leadership and investors after reportedly an interagency US government body that polices investments for national security risks mandated Saudi Arabia-affiliated fund Prosperity7 Ventures to sell its stake in the company. The fund led a $25 million fundraise announced by Rain in early 2022.
The forced removal of the fund, first reported by Bloomberg Thursday and described in the documents seen by WIRED, could add to Rain’s challenges of bringing a novel chip technology to market, potentially delaying the day OpenAI can make good on its $51 million advance order. Silicon Valley-based Grep VC acquired the shares; it and the Saudi fund did not respond to requests for comment.
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