"Deep integration" stirs controversy again: OpenAI's investment by core investors under scrutiny in radical industrial capital ecosystem.

Note that OpenAI is acquiring shares of Thrive Holdings. Thrive Holdings is an investment tool established by Thrive Capital earlier this year. This move further extends the cycle of transactions around the manufacturer of ChatGPT and its supporters. As one of OpenAI's major investors, Thrive Capital established Thrive Holdings earlier this year with the goal of creating and acquiring companies that can benefit from artificial intelligence. As part of the partnership announced on December 2nd, OpenAI will work with Thrive Holdings to accelerate the application of AI in enterprises, starting with accounting and IT services. A spokesperson for OpenAI stated that the company is not investing in Thrive Holdings. Instead, as a return to ensure that companies under Thrive Holdings receive support from the OpenAI team, this AI developer will receive shares of Thrive Holdings. Both companies stated that the goal is to have OpenAI employees "deeply embedded" within these businesses, "to improve speed, accuracy, and cost effectiveness." Thrive, founded by Joshua Kushner in 2010, is known for its style of making few large bets and often holding them for the long term. Recently, Thrive has shifted its focus to AI. The company's first investment in OpenAI was in 2023, valuing it at $27 billion. Later that year, it led a $6.6 billion investment round in OpenAI, valuing it at $157 billion, which was an astonishing valuation at the time. In April of this year, the company emulated the strategy of private equity by establishing Thrive Holdings. The cooperation between OpenAI and Thrive Holdings aims to drive the application of AI in enterprises, which is a shared focus of both companies. OpenAI and its competitors are eager to demonstrate the commercial value of their systems and attract more customers to help offset the huge costs of building and operating AI systems. Brad Leitkap, COO of OpenAI, stated in a statement: "This collaboration with Thrive Holdings aims to demonstrate the possibilities when AI research and deployment rapidly expands across an entire organization, revolutionizing the way businesses operate and interact with customers. We hope this collaboration can serve as a model for how global businesses and industries can engage deeply with OpenAI." However, this move has intensified a wave of transactions involving OpenAI, which have been criticized as essentially being circular transactions. As tech companies compete to build AI, whether through equity deals, chip deals, or cloud computing contracts, arrangements exchanging funds and services between them are increasingly scrutinized by investors and analysts. The emergence of these partnerships exacerbates concerns: an increasingly complex and interconnected network of business transactions is artificially supporting the current AI boom. In this case, OpenAI will acquire shares of a venture capital company's subsidiary, which itself holds shares in OpenAI. A source familiar with the transactions between Thrive Holdings and OpenAI stated that this arrangement is intended to achieve long-term incentive compatibility. For example, NVIDIA has agreed to invest up to $10 billion in OpenAI to help the AI startup fund data center construction. In return, OpenAI promises to deploy millions of NVIDIA chips at these sites. Several weeks later, OpenAI signed an agreement with NVIDIA's competitor AMD to deploy billions of dollars worth of AMD chips. As part of the collaboration, OpenAI is set to become one of AMD's largest shareholders.