Record Funding: OpenAI Secures 122 Billion US Dollars for AI Expansion

OpenAI has completed its largest funding round to date, worth 122 billion dollars, and is now valued at 852 billion dollars.

The funding is supported by a broad alliance of tech corporations and financial investors. According to Bloomberg, Amazon invested 50 billion dollars, while Nvidia and SoftBank each contributed 30 billion. Around 35 billion dollars of Amazon's stake is tied to OpenAI going public or achieving the goal of artificial general intelligence, Bloomberg reports. The remaining 12 billion comes from investment firms and wealthy private investors who were involved through banks.

In parallel, company shares are to be included in exchange-traded funds. OpenAI has also expanded its existing credit line to around 4.7 billion dollars. It is backed by an international banking consortium and was still unused at the time of closing. This allows OpenAI to diversify its funding sources and broaden access to capital beyond traditional venture capitalists.

According to OpenAI, the funds will primarily be used for data centers and chips, the further development of AI models, and the expansion of products and the platform for companies and developers. To this end, OpenAI works with a broad network of partners. While Nvidia is to continue forming the basis of the infrastructure, the company relies on several major cloud providers, chip platforms, and data center operators.

The funding round is interpreted as a possible step towards an IPO, although OpenAI itself has not confirmed any concrete plans or a timeframe.

OpenAI: Between Growth and Cost Pressure

On the occasion of the announcement, OpenAI also published new business figures. According to these, the company is now generating around 2 billion dollars in revenue per month, pointing to more than 900 million weekly active ChatGPT users and over 50 million paying subscribers. The enterprise business has also grown, according to OpenAI: it now accounts for more than 40 percent of revenue and is expected to approach the end-customer business by the end of 2026.

Despite monthly revenues in the billions, OpenAI is still far from profitability. The high costs for computing power, infrastructure, and development are likely to consume a large portion of the revenue. At the same time, voices in the industry are increasingly warning of exaggerated expectations and a possible AI bubble if growth cannot be sustainably translated into profits.

Two recent strategic steps show that OpenAI is aware of the financial challenges: the introduction of advertising and the discontinuation of the video app Sora, whose operation was considered particularly cost-intensive and whose monetization remained unclear.

According to OpenAI, the current strategy aims to further expand applications for companies and developers. ChatGPT is intended to serve as the central access point and distribution channel through which new functions are directly integrated into everyday use and enterprise applications. The goal is to bundle the various functions into a unified application that combines ChatGPT, the coding tool Codex, browsing, and agentic functions into a “super app.”

(mack)