SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — Artificial intelligence firm OpenAI, the creator of chatbot sensation ChatGPT, has raised a record $40 billion investment led by Japan’s SoftBank Group, taking its valuation to $300 billion. This achievement ranks OpenAI among the world’s most valuable private technology companies.
The original $10 billion investment comprises the $7.5 billion investment by SoftBank and contributions made by Microsoft and other investors. Another $30 billion is also planned to be released by year-end, depending on OpenAI’s restructuring into a for-profit organization. Legal challenges have followed co-founder Elon Musk’s insistence on blocking this move.
The capital inflow is set aside for pushing forward AI research, infrastructure scaling, and ChatGPT improvement, which currently has 500 million weekly users. OpenAI is also set to publicly release a model and its weights, mirroring Meta’s move with its Llama models.
Even with explosive growth, OpenAI lost $5 billion on revenue of $3.7 billion last year. Chevron made $18 billion in profit on $203 billion in revenue. SoftBank’s model depends on high amounts of debt, with the initial $10 billion taken as loans from Japanese lender Mizuho and other investors.
The latest funding round reflects the growing competition in the AI space, especially from DeepSeek of China, which has launched an affordable AI model.
