The new funding means the ChatGPT creator and artificial intelligence innovator will have a $300 billion valuation.
ChatGPT creator and AI innovator OpenAI said Monday that it had raised $40 billion in new funding, giving the company a blockbuster $300 billion post-money valuation.
CNBC reported that the new round is the largest private tech funding round on record.
In announcing the new funding, OpenAI said the fundraising “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,” the company said. “Their support will help us continue building AI systems that drive scientific discovery, enable personalized education, enhance human creativity, and pave the way toward AGI that benefits all of humanity.”
AGI is artificial general intelligence, which would allow for more autonomous, human-like AI technology.
The new round is being led by SoftBank with $30 billion along with backer Microsoft as well as Coatue, Altimeter and Thrive.
CNBC, citing a person familiar with the matter, said about $18 billion of the funding would be used for OpenAI’s involvement in the StargateProject, a new company backed by SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX.
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son will be the chairman of Stargate.
Stargate, which was announced by President Donald Trump early in his second term, said it intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the U.S. Tech heavyweights Arm, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and OpenAI are the key initial technology partners.
Tech companies from Google to Amazon and Microsoft over the past year have poured money into AI and energy sources to power the data centers that power the technology.
Gartner said that spending on generative AI is expected to total $644 billion in 2025, an increase of 76.4 percent from 2024.
