In search of 40 billion US dollars: OpenAI needs new investors
OpenAI wants to remain the most valuable private company in the world. But it needs money to do so: 40 billion US dollars.
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OpenAI continues to look for new investors. As the Wall Street Journal reports, they specifically need 40 billion US dollars. This would increase the value of the company to more than 300 billion US dollars. In the last financing round, OpenAI was valued at 157 billion US dollars. This makes it currently the most valuable private company in the world.
According to the report in the WSJ, OpenAI has not commented on the search for investors. In fact, the company is constantly looking for investors. However, because it is not clear when and whether investors will actually get any money back, the OpenAI website even states that it is better to note an investment as a donation straight away. So far, OpenAI has not earned enough money to drive forward its developments and offer applications and is dependent on investments. Even the most expensive subscription to date is only in the red. "Crazy," says Sam Altman.
Nevertheless, OpenAI wants to change its own corporate structure from a non-profit company to a profit-oriented company – so that investors can make money in the long term. This is only possible to a limited extent with non-profits.
Investment needed for Stargate project
OpenAI is also currently coming under pressure as the Chinese company DeepSeek claims to be able to offer AI models at a significantly lower cost with similar performance. However, it is still questionable how DeepSeek has implemented this technically. OpenAI and Microsoft are accusing the company of violating their terms of use by training their own models using OpenAI's models.
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The Japanese company Softbank is also said to be investing in OpenAI as part of the Stargate project. The money is actually supposed to flow directly into the large-scale project. Stargate is to become a 500 billion US dollar AI infrastructure in Texas. US President Donald Trump wants to use it to secure the USA's leading position in the field of AI. However, as far as is known so far, the project will not require any state subsidies.
(emw)
