A Friday blog post revealed that OpenAI purchased Rockset, an enterprise analytics business, to improve its retrieval infrastructure across its products.
A spokesperson told Bloomberg that this purchase is OpenAI's first in which the company will merge both a firm's technology and its team. The transaction's financial details remained undisclosed. To date, Rockset has raised $105 million, according to a report from The Verge.
According to OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap, Rockset's infrastructure "empowers companies" to process data into "actionable intelligence," and the company is "excited" to offer these advantages to customers.
Rockset Acquisition of OpenAI to Boost Data Proccessing
In a blog post, Rockset CEO Venkat Venkataramani announced that Rockset will join OpenAI and help with its retrieval infrastructure by assisting OpenAI to find solutions to the "hard database problems" of AI apps.
According to Reuters, this integration is anticipated to boost OpenAI's real-time data processing and vector search, allowing AI models to respond quicker and more accurately. OpenAI advertises products to help organizations index and search their data quickly.
We’ve acquired Rockset, a leading real-time analytics database that provides world-class data indexing and querying capabilities. We'll integrate Rockset’s technology across our products, empowering companies to transform their data into actionable intelligence.…
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) June 21, 2024
Venkataramani noted that Rockset will gradually migrate existing clients off the platform without "immediate change." Bloomberg reported that several Rockset employees would join OpenAI.
OpenAI has yet to disclose the terms of the deal with Rockset. Earlier this year, an investor tender offer valued OpenAI at $86 billion.
Former Meta developers launched Rockset, which builds real-time search and analytics databases. The firm uses AI for chatbots and anomaly detection. As of last year, Rockset has secured $105 million from Greylock, Sequoia, and HPE's venture capital arm, per the report.
Based on ChatGPT's success, OpenAI is extending its products to stay competitive. The company promotes ChatGPT Enterprise and its AI APIs to major enterprise leaders.
OpenAI is also adding new features to ChatGPT and creating new AI models to compete with Google and Anthropic. OpenAI is reportedly building a search engine to compete with Google and AI search firm Perplexity.
OpenAI Co-Founder Launches New Firm SSI
In a separate development, Ilya Sutskever, a co-founder of OpenAI and former head scientist, founded Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI)
One month after leaving OpenAI, he made this move. Sutskever founded SSI with Daniel Gross, a former Y Combinator colleague, and Daniel Levy, an ex-OpenAI engineer.
According to TechCrunch, Sutskever helped build "superintelligent" AI systems at OpenAI and increase AI safety. Jan Leike, OpenAI's Superalignment team co-leader, was a collaborator. In May, Sutskever and Leike resigned from OpenAI because of management issues with AI safety. Leike now works with competitor AI firm Anthropic.
In a 2023 blog post, Sutskever and Leike predicted that AI with above-human intelligence may exist within a decade. They stressed the need to explore control and restriction measures to ensure AI's goodness.
His new startup, SSI, promotes AI safety and capabilities. The SSI noted that its goal is safe superintelligence. The business wants to quickly enhance AI while maintaining safety.
Sutskever said SSI will avoid managerial overhead and product cycles and protect its objectives from short-term commercial pressures. He noted that they will employ "revolutionary engineering and scientific breakthroughs" to address concerns about safety and capabilities.
Sutskever declined to divulge SSI's finances or value. Unlike OpenAI, which started as a charity and was reorganized, SSI is always for-profit. SSI co-founder Daniel Gross said they would easily raise financing. SSI has Palo Alto and Tel Aviv offices and recruits technological talent.
