The upcoming investment round of OpenAI saw one high profile company backing out from contributing to its goals of raising as much as $6.5 billion. The company is none other than its own partner, Apple.
After both Silicon Valley giants established an unprecedented alliance that feature their technologies, Apple has reportedly been looking at joining OpenAI's shareholders as it approached the latest round. However, with only just only a little over a week to go, the Cupertino-based tech giant will no longer participate.
Apple is No Longer Investing in OpenAI
The Wall Street Journal shared a new report claiming that Apple has already backed out from its plans to invest in OpenAI in its latest $6.5 billion funding round. This means that Apple will no longer invest in OpenAI during this round. According to the report, much of the tech industry has been anticipating this move.
Apple was supposedly set to join many big tech companies in this new investment opening for OpenAI, making it one of the most significant fundings that the company will see. As of press time, Apple has provided no explanation behind its decision to back out.
It has also been noted that this may not be a closed book for Apple as the possibilities are endless for future funding opportunities.
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OpenAI Set to Raise $6.5B in Latest Round
Apple may have backed out of this latest OpenAI funding round, but the company is still expected to complete its $6.5 billion funding goal with the help of other investors. Most notably, Microsoft is yet again joining this funding with a $1 billion stake in OpenAI, and this is despite their earlier engagements that helped OpenAI's development of the GPT large-language model.
Nvidia is also reportedly joining this round.
Apple and OpenAI's Partnership
Although it was initially perceived as a rumor, Apple's latest WWDC 2024 event has unveiled its massive plans for the artificial intelligence (AI) features coming to Apple Intelligence, and these plans involve the partnership with OpenAI. With Apple Intelligence's writing tools and Siri's revamped experience, ChatGPT will play a significant role as an alternative to what the Cupertino-based tech giant will offer natively on iOS 18.
It is a surprising move from both companies as several rumors have pointed out that Apple is developing its foundational model to exclusively power its AI experiences, which has later been revealed to be Apple Intelligence. This is the path that other big tech companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon took when they started their AI journey as they focused more on their own developments rather than also introducing another company's tech.
That being said, Apple and OpenAI's partnership was previously revealed to have no monetary strings attached, with the former only adding it to iOS 18 as an option.
