Apple is reportedly preparing an OpenAI investment as part of a multibillion-dollar raise. Photo Credit: Solen Feyissa
Who says Google and Amazon get to have all the AI-investment fun? In another twist, Apple is reportedly poised to back ChatGPT developer OpenAI.
That possible investment, which would be part of a new raise valuing the AI business at over $100 billion, came to light in a Wall Street Journal report. At the time of this writing, the Apple Music developer didn’t appear to have addressed the matter publicly.
However, per the mentioned report, the “unusual” startup investment would see Apple (and potentially Nvidia as well) join existing multibillion-dollar backer Microsoft aboard the OpenAI train.
Against the backdrop of an accelerating battle for AI supremacy, reports previously suggested that Apple had even considered an artificial intelligence alliance with rival Meta.
But with the iPhone developer having tapped OpenAI in June as its first “Apple Intelligence” partner, things are seemingly trending in a different direction. Per the Journal, it’s unclear how much Apple may contribute to the Thrive Capital-led OpenAI round, but the raise is expected to total “several billion dollars.”
And in the bigger picture, the move would officially add Apple to a growing list of high-profile companies (and music streaming service operators) with stakes in artificial intelligence giants.
Perhaps most conspicuously, this overlap between leaders in on-demand streaming – which is, of course, an integral component of the contemporary music landscape – and AI mainstays refers to Amazon’s approximately $4 billion interest in Anthropic.
Facing a particularly important copyright infringement lawsuit from music publishers, the latter entity remains adamant that training its models on protected compositions sans authorization constitutes fair use.
Meanwhile, Microsoft and OpenAI are grappling with multiple training-related actions from a long list of professionals and businesses. And Daniel Ek-backed Air Street Capital, which specifically strives to support “AI-first companies,” has quietly provided funding to startups including “Hollywood-grade visual AI” platform Odyssey.
That’s not even accounting for the varied list of backers behind Suno and Udio (which are also the target of industry infringement claims, this time from the major labels) – not to mention the far-reaching AI activities of the YouTube Music owner Google/Alphabet, Facebook parent Meta, and TikTok developer ByteDance.
(Air Street Capital was an early investor in AI music startup Jukedeck, which ByteDance scooped up in 2019.)
With Apple’s possibly imminent OpenAI stake, the curious situation will feature more ties than ever between key streaming platform operators on the one hand and the very AI companies that are allegedly compromising the building blocks of creativity on the other.
Needless to say, it’ll be worth closely monitoring the trend as well as the byproducts thereof moving forward, especially because the challenges posed by generative AI for rightsholders and creatives appear exceedingly unlikely to abate anytime soon.
