OpenAI bags $4 bn credit line after $6.6-bn funding; launches ChatGPT’s new canvas interface

After securing $6.6 billion in new funding from leading investors, ChatGPT maker AI platform OpenAI has established a new $4 billion credit facility with JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Santander, Wells Fargo, SMBC, UBS, and HSBC. "This is a revolving credit facility that is undrawn at closing," says OpenAI.

With this, Open AI says it has access to over $10 billion in liquidity, allowing it to invest in new initiatives and operate with scale. "It also reaffirms our partnership with an exceptional group of financial institutions, many of whom are also OpenAI customers."

Sarah Friar, CFO of OpenAI, says the credit facility will strengthen its balance sheet and provide flexibility to seize future growth opportunities. "We are proud to have the strongest banks and investors in the world supporting us.”

OpenAI says it will use the money to invest in research and products and attract top talent.

ChatGPT’s New Interface

Close on the heels of the mega funding, OpenAI has launched its first major interface for ChatGPT, called canvas. The new interface aims to go beyond simple chat and help users with writing and coding. It is a new approach and the first major update to ChatGPT’s visual interface since we launched two years ago.

"Canvas opens in a separate window, allowing you and ChatGPT to collaborate on a project," says OpenAI.

Built with GPT-4o, canvas can be manually selected in the model picker while in beta. For now, canvas has been rolled out to ChatGPT Plus and Team users globally. Canvas is in early beta. "We also plan to make canvas available to all ChatGPT Free users when it’s out of beta," says the company.

Writing and Coding in Canvas

With canvas, OpenAI says ChatGPT can "better understand" the context of a task. "Like a copy editor or code reviewer, it can give inline feedback and suggestions with the entire project in mind."

In canvas, users can edit text or code. "There’s a menu of shortcuts to ask ChatGPT to adjust writing length, debug your code, and quickly perform other useful actions. You can also restore previous versions of your work by using the back button in canvas."

For coding, canvas can track and understand ChatGPT’s changes, improve code, add logs, and comments, fix bugs and even port code into a different language including JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Java, C++, or PHP.

OpenAI says canvas was released in beta after measuring progress with over 20 automated internal evaluations. "Human evaluations assessed canvas comment quality and accuracy functionality. Our canvas model outperforms the zero-shot GPT-4o with prompted instructions by 30% in accuracy and 16% in quality."