OpenAI has secured up to $40 billion in a record new funding round led by SoftBank Group that would give the artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer a whopping $300 billion valuation as it ramps up AI research, infrastructure and tools.
SoftBank, which is already partnering with OpenAI and Oracle Corp. on the $500 billion Stargate project, announced it has agreed to pitch in $10 billion in the funding round this month, with another $30 billion to come in December. The latter installment is contingent on OpenAI transitioning from a non-profit to a for-profit company by the end of the year, presumably paving the way for an initial public offering (IPO) sometime in 2026.
If OpenAI’s restructuring fails, SoftBank’s investment would drop to $20 billion.
“AI is a defining force shaping humanity’s future. Our expanded partnership with OpenAI accelerates our shared vision to unlock its full potential,” SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said in a statement.
In a blog post, OpenAI wrote, “We’re excited to be working in partnership with SoftBank Group — few companies understand how to scale transformative technology like they do.” OpenAI said the money “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.”
With the full $40 billion in funding, OpenAI would join the ranks of the most valuable private companies such as SpaceX, ByteDance and Stripe Inc.
The funding round is the largest of its kind on record, according to PitchBook data. A chunk of the fresh infusion of cash will cover OpenAI’s portion of Stargate, a White House-backed initiative to build a massive network of data centers and other infrastructure in the U.S.
OpenAI’s mega-funding round comes at a critical juncture as it seeks to transition to a for-profit model amid uber-competition from Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google, Meta Platforms Inc., and — eventually — Microsoft Corp. The software giant, which has plowed $13 billion into OpenAI, is increasingly making moves that will put it on a collision path with OpenAI.
Besides aiding Stargate, fresh funding will greatly assist OpenAI in its ambitious development efforts.
The ChatGPT maker plans to release its first open-weight language AI model with reasoning capabilities since GPT‑2 in the next few months, CEO Sam Altman said Monday. Open-weight language models, which are somewhere between open- and closed-source approaches, are usually cheaper for companies to use, and lets them customize the models.
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