New data from Stocklytics.com has revealed that OpenAI is the most-funded AI company in the world, with the rapid growth of the AI (especially generative AI) market leading to a massive influx of investment from venture capital (VC) firms.
As well as having received the highest amount of VC investment, with OpenAI raising US$14bn (£11.2bn) in total so far, the firm has secured more capital than the combined total of seven of the world’s other most-funded AI companies, including Anthropic, Databricks and Shield AI.
The accelerated growth of the market is attributed to the public release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a generative AI chatbot, which became the fastest-growing web app ever recorded, with 100 million users in just two months and an estimated 150 million current active users, according to Business of Apps.
The AI sector also delivered more unicorns than any other market in 2023, with one-fifth of the 95 total companies to join the global unicorn list heralding from the AI industry.
In addition to capital secured so far, other partnerships and investments have increased OpenAI’s company’s total valuation to US$80bn (£64.2bn).
Anthropic, the developer of ChatGPT competitor Claude, came second with US$4.2bn (£3.3bn) raised, followed by big data analysis platform Databricks, which ranked third with US$4bn (£3.2bn), before Shield AI’s US$1bn (£802m).
Humanoid robotics company Figure, which integrates AI into its robots, follows Shield AI and has raised US$854m (£686m) of fresh capital to date.
