OpenAI must transition to a for-profit company by the end of the year to secure the full $40 billion funding led by SoftBank it is in the final stages of raising, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday.

SoftBank (9984.T) can pare back the size of the funding round to $20 billion if Microsoft-backed (MSFT.O) OpenAI fails to restructure into a for-profit company by the end of the year.

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the news earlier in the day.

This would mark an accelerated deadline for OpenAI to pull off its complicated transition. It was under a two-year deadline from its last round of financing with investors.

The startup has said its transition to a for-profit entity is required to secure the capital it needs to develop the best AI models.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The British arm of Airbus has won a 150 million pound ($194 million) contract from the European Space Agency to build the landing platform for the first British-made rover set to touch down on Mars in 2030.

The Rosalind Franklin rover, built between 2018 and 2019 by Airbus engineers in Britain, had its September 2022 departure for the red planet aborted due to the cancellation of its Russian rocket ride as a result of the Ukraine conflict.

Britain said the UK Space Agency worked alongside global partners to substitute Russian components, including the landing platform which, following the award of the contract, will be built at Airbus’s facility in Stevenage, southeast England.

Airbus engineers will design the mechanical, thermal and propulsion systems for the 2030 rover landing, set to launch in 2028.

“This inspiring example of world-class British science will bring us one step closer to answering long-asked questions on potential life on Mars,” technology minister Peter Kyle said in a statement on Saturday.

The rover is tasked with exploring Mars and drilling as deep as two meters (6.56 ft) into the ground to search for evidence of past life, including fossilised microbes. It will be the first European-made rover to land on Mars, the statement said.

The United States was the last nation to send a rover to Mars in 2021 when NASA’s Perseverance collected samples confirming the existence of ancient lake sediments.

CoreWeave said on Thursday it was targeting a valuation of up to $26 billion in its US initial public offering, as the Nvidia-backed startup bets on strong demand for generative artificial intelligence.

The listing is seen as crucial to the revival of a largely moribund U.S. IPO market, as well as a gauge of investor appetite for new entrants in a sector that has propelled stock markets to record gains over the past two years.

The cloud services provider and some of its investors are looking to sell 49 million shares priced between $47 and $55 each to raise as much as $2.7 billion in the offering. Reuters was the first to report the terms on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, ahead of the IPO, CoreWeave had tied up with some of the biggest AI heavyweights, including Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Last week, the company signed an $11.9 billion infrastructure contract with OpenAI.

CoreWeave, which provides access to data centers and high-powered chips for AI workloads, mainly supplied by Nvidia, will issue shares worth $350 million to the ChatGPT maker through a private placement in the IPO.