“Altman Sought Billions For Chip Venture Before OpenAI Ouster: Altman Was Fundraising in the Middle East for New Chip Venture; The Project, Code-Named Tigris, Is Intended to Rival Nvidia”, Edward Ludlow, Ashlee Vance2023-11-19 (AI hardware, OA; backlinks)⁠:

In the weeks leading up to his shocking ouster from OpenAI, Sam Altman was actively working to raise billions from some of the world’s largest investors for a new chip venture, according to people familiar with the matter.

Altman had been traveling to the Middle East to fundraise for the project, which was code-named Tigris, the people said. The OpenAI chief executive officer planned to spin up an AI-focused chip company that could produce semiconductors that compete against those from Nvidia which currently dominates the market for artificial intelligence tasks. Altman’s chip venture is not yet formed and the talks with investors are in the early stages, said the people, who asked not to be named as the discussions were private.

…Altman’s fundraising efforts came at an important moment for the AI startup. OpenAI has been working to finalize a tender offer, led by Thrive Capital, that would let employees sell their shares at an $86 billion valuation. SoftBank and others had hoped to be part of this deal, one person said, but were put on a waitlist for a similar deal at a later date. In the interim, Altman urged investors to consider his new ventures, two people said.

…OpenAI said Friday that Altman was ousted from his role after an internal review found “he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board.” The board and Altman had differences of opinion on AI safety, the speed of development of the technology and the commercialization of the company, according to a person familiar with the matter. Altman’s ambitions and side ventures added complexity to an already strained relationship with the board.

…Altman’s pitch was for a startup that would aim to build Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs—semiconductors that are designed to handle high volume specialized AI workloads. The goal is to provide lower-cost competition to market incumbent Nvidia and, according to people familiar, aid OpenAI by lowering the ongoing costs of running its own services like ChatGPT and DALL·E 3.

…A number of prominent venture firms, including some existing investors in OpenAI, are also ready to back any new venture Altman forms, people familiar said. Microsoft, OpenAI’s biggest investor, is also interested in backing Altman’s chips venture, according to people familiar. Microsoft declined to comment. In a statement on Twitter, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla said that his firm wanted Altman “back at OpenAI but will back him in whatever he does next.”

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