Every tech giant is “ganging up” on OpenAI, said a Thrive Capital partner.
On an episode of the “Uncapped” podcast released on Wednesday, Vince Hankes said Big Tech companies don’t want new players entering their league.
“My mental model for you on how the competitive landscape looks like is: OpenAI is in a corner and every Big Tech company has a bazooka pointed at them to try to take them down,” Hankes said. “Because none of those Big Tech companies want a new Big Tech company.”
Thrive Capital, founded by Josh Kushner in 2011, is a major investor in the ChatGPT maker. The venture capital firm has also invested in companies including SpaceX, Databricks, and Stripe.
“We should want it to be a competitive fair fight for a new company to break into Mag Seven,” Hankes added, referring to Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Tesla, and Nvidia. “Because that’s what our whole ecosystem lives and breathes off of.”
This support for OpenAI doesn’t mean the VC firm only plans to invest in the AI giant, Hankes said.
“There isn’t a risk-adjusted better return than OpenAI, and therefore if we’re given a decision, we should do it,” he said about investing more in the company.
“At the same time, you can’t not take a risk because of that,” he added.
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Hankes did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
In the past month, a string of deals and announcements has positioned $500 billion OpenAI closer to some of its more established tech competitors.
At its DevDay event on Monday, the company announced it’s bringing apps inside ChatGPT, which CEO Sam Altman said now has 800 million weekly users.
OpenAI also unveiled an app software development kit that allows developers to build their own apps for ChatGPT. This makes the AI tool more like an app store, a move that could threaten industry leaders like Apple and Google. Google investors have already been concerned about ChatGPT and other generative AI tools eating into Google’s search engine share.
On Monday, OpenAI announced a multi-year deal with AMD in which it will deploy chips requiring up to six gigawatts of power.
The agreement came just weeks after Nvidia announced that OpenAI would gain access to 10 gigawatts of high-powered GPUs, alongside a $100 billion investment from the chipmaker.
OpenAI is set to produce its first AI chip in partnership with Broadcom next year.
