OpenAI, the developer of chatbot ChatGPT, has closed the largest round of financing in its history at $40bn, with SoftBank Group Corp. as the main participant.
The investment round valued OpenAI at $300 billion, the company said in a statement.
The new funding “will allow us to further push the boundaries of artificial intelligence research, scale our computing infrastructure and continue to provide powerful tools to the 500 million people who use ChatGPT weekly,” OpenAI said in a statement.
SoftBank said it will invest up to $30bn in OpenAI Global, OpenAI’s for-profit subsidiary. A further $10bn will be provided to the company by a group of other investors.
According to SoftBank’s announcement, OpenAI will receive a total of $10bn in the first phase – in mid-April – with the remaining $30bn being provided on the condition that OpenAI Global is spun off into an independent commercial entity by the end of 2025 or early 2026.
If this condition is not met, OpenAI will receive only $10bn of investment in the second phase, SoftBank said.
OpenAI’s 2024 revenue was $3.7bn, and the company expects to more than triple it in 2025 to $12.7bn. At the same time, it does not expect to reach positive free cash flow before 2029, given the high costs of developing data centres, as well as hiring specialists to develop advanced AI technologies. OpenAI forecasts that its revenue will exceed $125bn in 2029.