OpenAI Acquires Rockset in Major Stock Deal
The exact financial terms were not disclosed.
OpenAI has acquired Rockset, a search and database analytics startup, in a nine-figure stock transaction.[1] The acquisition was confirmed by OpenAI on June 21st. While the exact financial terms were not disclosed, sources revealed to Reuters that this transaction is OpenAI's largest acquisition to date.[2]
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Founded by former Meta engineers, Rockset specializes in real-time search and analytics databases, using artificial intelligence (AI) to power applications ranging from chatbots to anomaly detection. The firm had garnered support from several investors, including Greylock, Sequoia, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise's venture capital arm, with a total funding of $105 million as of last year.
“Rockset will become part of OpenAI and power the retrieval infrastructure backing OpenAI’s product suite. We’ll be helping OpenAI solve the hard database problems that AI apps face at massive scale,” Rockset’s CEO Venkat Venkataramani stated.[3]
Days earlier, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman informed some shareholders that the company is considering a shift to a for-profit firm structure, according to a report by The Information. This potential change would mean the firm's nonprofit board would no longer control the company.
Altman’s suggestion came after Elon Musk's decision to dismiss the lawsuit against OpenAI and its co-founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. Sued in the California state court, the lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice on June 11th, the day after Musk openly denounced OpenAI’s new collaboration with Apple.
This lawsuit was filed in February by Musk against OpenAI, Altman, and Brockman for breach of contract and fiduciary duty. He said that OpenAI, which was created to build AGI to help humanity, has become profit-oriented and is now mostly owned by Microsoft.
Also, OpenAI, in collaboration with Microsoft, announced a new initiative aimed at supporting non-profit organizations by offering discounts on its corporate ChatGPT subscriptions. This move comes as part of OpenAI's strategy to expand the adoption of its AI products within the enterprise sector.
