Humain preps its IPO — OpenAI is on the hunt for more money

Got what it takes?: Humain is looking for “a few exceptional individuals” to join the company’s IPO preparation team, CEO Tareq Amin says in a LinkedIn post. The post comes shortly after the close of Saudi Arabia’s Leap conference, which put the spotlight on AI advances in the kingdom. There’s no timeline for the IPO yet. More from AGBI here.

Speaking of raising money: OpenAI is mulling another funding round that would boost its market valuation to a whopping USD 1.2 tn. This is ahead of an IPO that’s likely to come in 2027 as noted above. More from Reuters.

Getting colder: If there’s an AI Cold War competition between the US and China, Gulf nations are well positioned to take the role of non-aligned nations, playing one superpower off the other and coming out ahead, Judah Taub, founder of the Israeli venture fund Hetz Ventures, argues in a worthwhile Semafor op ed.

Thesis statement: “Rather than two sealed blocs, [this competition] could produce a handful of swing states able to play both sides, extracting economic and strategic benefits as Washington and Beijing compete for their allegiance,” Taub writes.

Our take: The Cold War analogy can be useful for describing the nature of the US-China relationship when it comes to AI — especially if you’re taking a 30,000 foot view or trying to explain this stuff to your non-techie relatives. But be prepared for dozens of caveats. US-China competition on AI is very different from US-Soviet competition in weapons, industry, space travel, etc. and the US and China are far more economically and technologically intermingled and interdependent than the US and the Soviet Union ever were.

Feeling some Cold War nostalgia?: Consider streaming Martin Ritt’s masterful 1965 thriller “The Spy who Came in From the Cold” or Norman Jewison’s 1966 Cold War comedy “The Russians are Coming the Russians are Coming” after the kids are in bed tonight. Or you could go for a contemporary take on the era with Pawel Pawlikowski’s 2018 film “Cold War.”

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading. We’ll be back in your inbox on Thursday.