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The first public acquisition since OpenAI announced its establishment actually bought a company that makes games?
**Source: **Financial Association
Edit Shi Zhengcheng
In the early hours of Thursday, Beijing time, OpenAI quietly issued an announcement on its official website, announcing that it has acquired the start-up Global Illumination and brought the entire team under its umbrella. New members have begun to participate in the development of core products including ChatGPT.
(Source: Social Media)
This transaction is also OpenAI's first public acquisition since its establishment in 2015. The specific terms of the transaction have not been made public.
In fact, in the past few years, OpenAI has indeed not been able to spend much money for acquisitions. The company's most famous label, apart from artificial intelligence, is huge losses. According to media reports, OpenAI’s overall losses will double to $540 million in 2022. However, considering that Microsoft invested another $10 billion in OpenAI earlier this year, OpenAI's financial situation should have room for a little acquisition.
**What does Global Illumination do? **
Global Illumination is a start-up founded in 2021 in New York by Thomas Dimson, Taylor Gordon and Joey Flynn, all three of whom worked at Zuckerberg's Instagram. The company's main business is using artificial intelligence to create smart tools, digital infrastructure and digital experiences.
In this entrepreneurial team, the most famous is the CEO Thomas Dimson, who was the development director of Instagram before resigning to start a business. The functions born in his hands include Instagram’s information flow ranking algorithm, the experience of the “Explore” tab, and story voting. Stickers, Hyperlapse time-lapse photography software, etc.
In addition to Dimson, the official website also lists the information of several staff members, which shows that the team is not large.
(Source: Global Illumination)
For Global Illumination, the company's most recent project is an open-source massively multiplayer online sandbox game called Biomes that runs in a web browser. Judging from the preview of the leading film released on the website, the style is similar to the game "Minecraft", which ranks first in the world's historical sales. It is unclear whether the game will continue after the acquisition is completed.
(Source: Biomes)
From the past experience of Global Illumination products, the company seems to be highly focused on visual products and services. This also hints that OpenAI may develop additional multimedia capabilities for ChatGPT, or launch a video generation service that competes with Runway. Members of this team also have development experience in Instagram, YouTube, Google, Pixar Animation, and Riot Games, which is also an important supplement for OpenAI, which lacks C-end product experience.
As ChatGPT became a hit in terms of technology and attention, OpenAI is also pursuing commercial success. According to reports, Sam Altman once told investors that the company hopes to achieve $200 million in revenue this year and double it to $1 billion by 2024. **