OpenAI Seeks Additional Financial Support From Microsoft For ChatGPT 5

In a new interview, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has confirmed that the American AI company is seeking further financial support from its top investor Microsoft to support its development efforts.

The interview, which was published in The Financial Times, comes days after OpenAI hosted its first-ever developer conference, DevDay.

To recap, Microsoft recently announced it will invest $10 billion (about £8 billion) in OpenAI in a bid to extend the partnership between the 2 companies to include AI supercomputing and research.

OpenAI, Microsoft partnership

Altman told FT that OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft is "working really well". The top executive said he is hoping "to raise a lot more over time" to help fund the development of more AI models.

Furthermore, Altman said he is interested in figuring out "how to build superintelligence" and acquiring the computing power that will facilitate this process.

"The vision is to make artificial general intelligence (AGI), figure out how to make it safe and figure out the benefits," Altman said.

According to big tech companies like IBM, AGI has an "intelligence equal to humans," coupled with a self-aware consciousness that comes in handy for solving problems, learning and planning for the future.

Before the arrival of GPTs, OpenAI was developing autonomous agents that could perform multiple tasks such as making payments, sending emails and filing claims.

"We will make these agents more and more powerful and the actions will get more and more complex from here," Altman told The Financial Times.

GPT-5 could be in the offing

During the recently concluded DevDay event, the company announced new customisation options for CPT-4 along with a slew of exciting new features. Now, Altman has confirmed that OpenAI is working on the next version of ChatGPT dubbed ChatGPT 5.

While the capabilities of OpenAI's GPT-4 AI tool is similar to human in terms of knowledge and understanding, the upcoming AI models are expected to outperform humans in terms of knowledge.

Moreover, the next generation of AI models will be able to reason and process complex ideas just like humans. This is known as artificial general intelligence (AGI). To recap, Altman was recently criticised for comparing the capabilities of AGI to a median human.

Also, governments, regulators and big tech companies are still trying to figure out how to ensure AGI does not end up destroying humanity.

Training the next AI

Microsoft has already invested a lot of money into OpenAI as part of a multi-year agreement. However, Altman is hoping more will follow, claiming "there is a long way to go and a lot of compute to build out between here and AGI".

Microsoft's new business model centres on the use of AI. As a result, the company's AI-powered assistant Copilot has been integrated into various applications. So, it is safe to say that the investment aligns with Microsoft's attempt to be at the forefront of the AI space.