OpenAI’s gobsmacking US$6.6 billion (A$9.5 billion) raise, announced last week at a US$157bn (A$230bn) valuation, has a small slice of Australia on the cap table, with Melbourne fund manager Boman Group chipping in A$10 million.
The record raise for the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup was led by Josh KuschUS VC Thrive Capital with chipmaker Nvidia, Japan’s SoftBank Microsoft, Khosla Ventures and Abu Dhabi’s MGX among its heavy-hitting investors.
Boman was founded in 2011 by Eric Gao and Julius Wei as BMY Group, then rebranded in 2024. It currently has around $600 million in assets under management, offering high-net worths, especially from Asia, a range of fixed income, private equity, and IPO investment options.
The OpenAI investment is part of Boman Group’s “Unicorn strategy”, backing late-stage technology scaleups ahead of an exit or capital event. The fund has previously invested in Airbnb, Databricks and Swedish BNPL Klarna. Boman is also a limited partner in VC funds at Square Peg, Main Sequence, Tiger Global, and Bain Capital, and backed neobank 86 400, which was acquired by NAB.
Boman executive director Eva Zhuang led the OpenAI investment, which was negotiated in less than a month.
“This was a hard deal to get over the line considering the speed in which it was conducted combined with the interest, valuation and the timezones involved. However, we are excited to have secured a placement in the world’s fastest growing technology company to-date,” she said.
“We have been actively investing in AI since 2021. Fundamentally, we clearly see a new wave of productivity revolution unfolding: the cost of training, deploying, and using AI is rapidly decreasing, while the productivity gains from AI are increasing at a fast pace.”
She pointed to fellow portco Klarna, one of OpenAI’s early enterprise partners and using it has added around US$40m to the fintech’s profitability.
“Klarna’s AI assistant has engaged in 2.3 million conversations, handling two-thirds of Klarna’s customer service chats. It performs the work equivalent to 700 full-time agents, operating in 23 markets, available 24/7, and communicating in over 35 languages,” she said.
“This presents opportunities on two levels: across the 3 key layers of AI development, participants across compute power, algorithms, and data will continue to benefit from the wave. At the same time, ‘traditional’ businesses that can truly harness AI to unlock efficiencies are likely to gain a stronger competitive edge as well.”
Boman CEO and cofounder Eric Gao said ChatGPT’s growth justifies OpenAI’s astonishing valuation, which has nearly doubled since employees cashed in via a secondary sale of shares earlier this year at a US$86 billion valuation.
“It took Uber 70 months to hit 100 million users globally. Through savvy partnerships and a clever open access program, OpenAI has accomplished the same goal in just two months,” he said.
“In addition, approximately 92% of the Fortune 500 are among OpenAI’s clients. With each new release, it leaves its competitors in the dust. And with its latest pivot towards further commercialisation and plans for an exit, it’s an ideal investment for our portfolio.”
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