OpenAI lands historic $40 billion investment led by SoftBank, hits $300 billion valuation amid AI boom

OpenAI has closed a jaw-dropping $40 billion funding round led by SoftBank, pushing its valuation to a staggering $300 billion, in what’s now being called the largest private tech funding round in history, according to CNBC.

Bloomberg reported that the funding deal will see OpenAI receive an immediate $10 billion, $7.5 billion from SoftBank, and an additional $2.5 billion from a syndicate of investors. The remaining $30 billion is expected by the end of the year, contingent on the AI powerhouse formalising its transition to a for-profit model. Should that not happen, OpenAI could reportedly forfeit up to 25% of the agreed funding.

This investment follows on the heels of OpenAI’s ambitious $500 billion Stargate initiative, which is a massive AI infrastructure project being developed in partnership with Oracle, Abu Dhabi’s MGX, and SoftBank, aiming to build high-performance datacentres over the next four years.

OpenAI’s public appeal is showing no signs of slowing. Earlier this week, CEO Sam Altman posted that “ChatGPT gained one million users in a single hour,” largely driven by the rollout of its new ‘Images’ feature, which lets users generate Studio Ghibli-style art with a simple text prompt. The feature went viral almost instantly.

Altman also teased what’s coming next: “We will release a powerful new open-weight language model with reasoning in the coming months,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

ChatGPT now reportedly serves 500 million people each week. An astonishing feat for a platform that only launched just over two years ago. Despite this, OpenAI is still in burn mode. Bloomberg reports the company is expecting to pull in $12.7 billion in revenue this year, up from $3.7 billion in 2024. It doesn’t expect to become cash-flow positive until 2029, by which time it projects annual revenue will hit $125 billion.