OpenAI announced ownership stake in private equity investment firm Thrive Holdings, whose parent company, Thrive Capital, is one of the main investors in, you guessed it, OpenAI. Although OpenAI did not spend money on the ownership stake, according to an anonymous source cited by The Financial Times.the company announced that it will provide Thrive Holdings companies with employees, models, products and services.
OpenAI may also receive distributions from Thrive Holdings’ future profits, i.e FT – he wrote, citing an anonymous source. It’s the latest round robin deal in an industry known for taking advantage of FOMO and passing money back and forth between a diminutive group of companies.
The partnership will focus on two sectors at the top of Thrive Holdings’ priority list: IT services and accounting. According to the announcement, it is in these “massive, rule-based and labor-intensive processes that the OpenAI platform can deliver immediate benefits.” The stated goal is to utilize artificial intelligence to “increase speed, accuracy and cost efficiency while improving service quality.”
Joshua Kushner, CEO of Thrive Holding and Capital and younger brother of President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, said artificial intelligence is different from previous technologies that have changed industries “from the outside in.” “We believe this paradigm shift will happen from within, as domain experts and practitioners use AI as a native tool to transform their fields,” Kushner said. Trump himself is a staunch supporter of artificial intelligence, and officials in his administration – such as David Sacks – stand to benefit from the industry’s development.
Thrive Holdings’ goal in sourcing IT and accounting services is to “transform them with artificial intelligence.” FT he wrote. As part of the agreement with OpenAI, the startup will gain access to data from Thrive Holdings companies to train AI models. There are two potential benefits for OpenAI: one is the ability to embed it into Thrive Holdings portfolio companies, and the other is a up-to-date, affluent source of training data. OpenAI wants to cooperate more broadly with the private equity industry, an anonymous source said FT. A source close to Thrive Capital said OpenAI will act as the “research arm” of the capital group.
The Thrive deal could be the first in a up-to-date wave of similar deals, said Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s chief operating officer.