OpenAI on Tuesday announced that it closed a record-breaking funding round at a post-money valuation of $852 billion.
The round totaled $122 billion of committed capital, up from the $110 billion figure that the company announced in February. SoftBank co-led the round alongside other investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and D. E. Shaw Ventures, OpenAI said.
OpenAI kickstarted the artificial intelligence boom with the launch of its ChatGPT chatbot in 2022, and the company has since ballooned into one of the fastest-growing commercial entities on the planet. As of March, ChatGPT supports more than 900 million weekly active users, including more than 50 million subscribers.
“AI is driving productivity gains, accelerating scientific discovery, and expanding what people and organizations can build,” OpenAI said in a release. “This funding gives us the resources to continue to lead at the scale this moment demands.”
With the close of its latest funding round, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will be under pressure to justify his company’s massive valuation, especially as it gears up for a potential IPO. The startup has been retreating from some hefty spending plans and shuttering certain features and products in recent months, including its short-form video app Sora, as it looks to rein in costs.
OpenAI said Tuesday that it’s generating $2 billion in revenue per month. It made $13.1 billion in revenue last year. The company is still burning cash and is not yet profitable.
In February, OpenAI revealed $110 billion of commitments from some of its strategic investors that anchored its funding round. Amazon agreed to invest up to $50 billion in the startup, Nvidia invested $30 billion, and SoftBank invested $30 billion.
The additional $12 billion of capital that OpenAI raised came from a broader pool of investors. OpenAI said it extended participation to investors through bank channels for the first time and raised $3 billion from individual investors.
Microsoft, one of OpenAI’s longtime partners, also participated, but OpenAI did not disclose the size of the company’s investment in its Tuesday release. As of late last year, Microsoft had invested more than $13 billion in the startup.
“Moments like this do not come often,” OpenAI said. “The capital being deployed today is helping build the infrastructure layer for intelligence itself. Over time, that value will flow back into the economy, to companies, to communities, and increasingly to individuals.”
— CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos contributed to this report.
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