OpenAI has closed its long-awaited funding round at a valuation of $157 billion, including the $6.6 billion the company raised from an extensive roster of investment firms and big tech companies. While OpenAI didn’t name the investors in Wednesday’s press release, a person with knowledge of the matter said the round was led by Thrive Capital and included participation from existing backer Microsoft as well as chipmaker Nvidia, SoftBank and others. Thrive planned to invest $1 billion in the round, CNBC previously reported. OpenAI’s rapid ascent, which began with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, has been the biggest story in the tech industry over the last couple years, bringing the concept of generative artificial intelligence into the mainstream and paving the way for tens of billions of dollars of investments in AI infrastructure. “The new funding will allow us to double down on our leadership in frontier AI research, increase compute capacity, and continue building…
