Years before Sam Altman was ousted, OpenAI was reported to sign an agreement to invest $51 million in an AI chip startup where Altman himself has personal investments, the Wired revealed.
Investor document shows that the AI firm signed a nonbinding agreement in 2019 with Rain AI to spend $51 million for the startup's neuromorphic processing unit once completed.
The chip is supposed to replicate features of a human brain and requires less power than Nvidia's AI chips, a big draw for AI companies with huge operations like OpenAI.
Rain told investors that Altman made personal investments with the company since 2018 for up to $1 million. The agreement was not reported before the announcement.
OpenAI's letter of intent was made public following the US government forced the Saudi Aramco-owned Prosperity7 to sell its shares due to possible intellectual property leakage to China.
Altman has previously been reported to fundraise for a new AI chip business with the Saudi Arabian government before he was fired over two weeks ago.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Personal Investments
The OpenAI CEO has been under hot water even before his firing due to a web of investments all directly linked to him.
Over the past decade, the tech entrepreneur made around 400 investments in tech companies like Reddit, Stripe and Asana. He also funded other AI startups like Cerebras and Humane.
Altman earlier said that he tries to "avoid things that are directly an issue with the company you're running and disclose everything."
Despite the inked agreement, OpenAI has not allocated any money towards Rain AI.
Battle for Affordable AI Chips
Nvidia remains the biggest supplier of graphics processing units dedicated to housing large language models used in AI, but rising prices have made some companies look elsewhere.
Microsoft, the biggest investor of OpenAI, has launched a new project wing to create customized AI chips for its cloud services operations to curve spending on expensive Nvidia chips.
Rain has also publicly announced earlier this year to soon "tape out" a test chip before 2024.
Even Altman has been known to complain about the "brutal crunch" for AI chips and the "eye-watering" costs needed to buy them.
Related Article : Microsoft Debuts New AI Chip to Compete with NVIDIA, Meet Demands
