OpenAI has successfully closed a monumental $40 billion funding round, spearheaded by SoftBank, propelling its valuation to an astounding $300 billion. According to CNBC, this marks the largest private tech funding round in history.
As reported by Bloomberg, the investment deal includes an initial $10 billion, with $7.5 billion coming from SoftBank and an additional $2.5 billion from a group of investors. The remaining $30 billion is expected to be disbursed by the end of the year, contingent upon OpenAI’s formal transition to a for-profit model. Failure to do so could see the company forfeiting up to 25% of the agreed funding.
This major investment follows OpenAI’s ambitious $500 billion Stargate project—an extensive AI infrastructure initiative in collaboration with Oracle, Abu Dhabi’s MGX, and SoftBank. Over the next four years, the project aims to build high-performance data centers to support AI advancements.
Meanwhile, OpenAI’s user base continues to skyrocket. Earlier this week, CEO Sam Altman revealed that ChatGPT gained one million users in just an hour, thanks to the launch of its new ‘Images’ feature, which allows users to create Studio Ghibli-style artwork through simple text prompts. The feature quickly went viral.
Altman also teased an upcoming breakthrough: “We will release a powerful new open-weight language model with advanced reasoning capabilities in the coming months,” he posted on X (formerly Twitter).
Currently, ChatGPT boasts 500 million weekly users, a remarkable achievement for a platform launched just over two years ago. However, OpenAI remains in investment mode, with Bloomberg projecting $12.7 billion in revenue for 2025, up from $3.7 billion in 2024. Despite this growth, the company does not anticipate becoming cash-flow positive until 2029, by which time it expects annual revenue to reach $125 billion.
