OpenAI has announced the closure of a historic $40 billion funding round, marking the largest private tech investment to date.
Japan’s SoftBank is leading the investment with a $30 billion contribution, joined by key backers such as Microsoft.
This influx of capital values OpenAI at $300 billion — nearly three times the previous record for private tech funding.
A substantial portion of the funds, approximately $18 billion, is earmarked for Stargate, a joint project announced in January by former U.S. President Donald Trump between OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle.
The funding will be distributed in two phases: an initial $10 billion, followed by the remaining $30 billion by the end of 2025. However, SoftBank’s full investment is conditional — if OpenAI does not transition into a for-profit entity by December 31, SoftBank may reduce its contribution to as little as $20 billion.
In a statement released yesterday, OpenAI commented, “Today we’re announcing new funding—$40 billion at a $300 billion post-money valuation, which enables us to push the frontiers of AI research even further, scale our compute infrastructure, and deliver increasingly powerful tools for the 500 million people who use ChatGPT every week.
“We’re excited to be working in partnership with SoftBank Group — few companies understand how to scale transformative technology like they do. Their support will help us continue building AI systems that drive scientific discovery, enable personalised education, enhance human creativity, and pave the way toward AGI that benefits all of humanity.”
OpenAI’s fundraising success comes amid growing interest in AI-related public offerings. CoreWeave recently became the first AI-focused company to go public, although its stock price dropped nearly 10% yesterday, falling significantly below its initial offering price.
Despite its rough public market debut, CoreWeave secured an $11.9 billion agreement with OpenAI last month. As part of the deal, OpenAI will invest $350 million in CoreWeave’s stock.
Michael Intrator, co-founder and CEO of CoreWeave, commented at the time, “Partnering with OpenAI on this new contract underscores CoreWeave’s proven ability to deliver reliable and high-performance infrastructure services, powering AI innovations for world-leading AI labs. We remain a partner of choice to meet the cutting-edge needs of pioneers looking to unleash AI’s potential to change the world.”
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI commented, “Advanced AI systems require reliable compute, and we’re excited to continue scaling with CoreWeave so we can train even more powerful models and offer great services to even more users.”
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