OpenAI Closes Up to $40B Funding Round, Valuing ChatGPT Maker at $300B

OpenAI has raised up to $40 billion in new funding from investors led by SoftBank Group, valuing the ChatGPT maker at $300 billion.

The investment enables the startup “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,” OpenAI said.

OpenAI Must Transform Into For-Profit Firm by End of Year to Receive Full Pledge

However, Microsoft (MSFT)-backed OpenAI will not receive the full amount pledged if the artificial intelligence (AI) startup fails to transform itself into a for-profit company “by the end of 2025, or in certain circumstances, early 2026.”

SoftBank, which “is planning to syndicate out” $10 billion of the up to $40 billion total to co-investors, is making an initial $10 billion payment. It will only invest $10 billion further if OpenAI fails to restructure into a for-profit firm.

In January, President Donald Trump announced the companies and Oracle (ORCL) had formed a joint venture to build AI infrastructure in the U.S. The companies said they would commit $100 billion to start, and as much as $500 billion over the next four years toward the initiative, called Stargate.