The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI is in talks to sell existing shares worth at least $300 million.

In a Thursday report the Wall Street Journal revealed that OpenAI, the creator of the highly successful ChatGBT AI bot, was in talks to sell existing shares amounting $300 million to VC firms Thrive Capital and Founders Fund. The transaction (known as a tender offer) would value OpenAI at around $29 billion, WSJ said, with the sellers being existing shareholders including employees.

In a previous tender in 2021, OpenAI valued at $14 billion.

WSJ’s sources said that the present deal had not yet been finalized and the terms could still change.

OpenAI was founded as a non-profit in 2015 by tech investor Sam Altman, with Elon Musk and Reid Hoffman coming in as initial investors. According to WSJ, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), also an investor in the company, is interested in boosting its stake.

ChatGPT has logged over a million users since its launch on November 30, and is popular for its ability to issue intelligent answers to text queries from users. It is being speculated that the software could find application inside a search engine.

It was reported that Microsoft is considering the integration of the OpenAI ChatGPT3 technology into its Bing search engine.

That would be a huge change from the Google search engine’s link-based responses to search questions, and potentially allow Microsoft to challenge Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) supremacy in search.

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