OpenAI Valued at $300 Billion After Record-Setting Funding Round

OpenAI on Monday announced it has raised $40 billion in what is the largest funding round for a private tech company ever. The new funding values OpenAI — the parent company of ChatGPT that is spearheaded by CEO Sam Altman — at $300 billion.

Softbank, the tech-focused Japanese conglomerate, contributed $30 billion as part of the latest funding round; the additional $10 billion comes from various other backers, CNBC reported, including Alitmeter, Thrive, Coatue, and Microsoft, OpenAI’s longtime tech partner.

OpenAI’s valuation has nearly doubled in six months, after it was valued at $157 billion following a $6.6 billion funding round in early Oct.

The fresh $40 billion “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,” OpenAI said in a blog post.

Monday’s raise easily dwarfs the previous record-setting private tech deal, which was Ant Group’s $14 billion raise in 2018. OpenAI has said it expects 2025 sales to triple to $12.7 billion.

President Trump, soon after reentering the White House in Jan., tapped OpenAI, Oracle, and Softbank to be part of his new artificial intelligence program, dubbed Stargate. A healthy chunk — $18 billion — of the new funding will go towards OpenAI’s Stargate commitment, CNBC reported on Monday.

Monday’s announcement also comes less than a month after X boss Elon Musk said he was leading a group of investors to buy OpenAI for $97.4 billion; OpenAI’s board shot down the offer.

Altman’s push to change OpenAI into a for-profit company has been the key issue in his feud with Musk in recent years. Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 alongside Altman and a handful of other executives, but Musk has vehemently opposed Altman’s plan to shift away from the company’s nonprofit status. The Tesla CEO  sued Altman and another OpenAI founder last year over the move, saying they “betrayed” OpenAI’s founding principles. OpenAI is currently still working through the legal process to become a for-profit company.

The post OpenAI Valued at $300 Billion After Record-Setting Funding Round appeared first on TheWrap.