OpenAI announced on Monday that it has secured US$40 billion in a new funding round, valuing the ChatGPT maker at an unprecedented US$300 billion. This marks the largest capital-raising event ever for a startup.
The funding comes through a strategic partnership with Japanese investment giant SoftBank Group, a move that OpenAI claims will allow it to further advance artificial intelligence (AI) research. “Their support will help us continue building AI systems that drive scientific discovery, enable personalized education, enhance human creativity, and pave the way toward AGI (artificial general intelligence) that benefits all of humanity,” the San Francisco-based company stated in a blog post.
SoftBank’s Vision for AI Evolution
SoftBank, in its announcement, emphasized its mission to achieve artificial super intelligence (ASI) – an advanced form of AI surpassing human intelligence. The company asserted that OpenAI is its closest partner in reaching this goal.
“The advancement of OpenAI’s AI models is key to achieving AGI and ASI, and massive computing power is essential,” SoftBank said, justifying its significant investment. The deal includes an initial US$10 billion cash injection, with an additional US$30 billion planned by year’s end, contingent upon certain conditions.
With this investment, OpenAI aims to scale its infrastructure and “deliver increasingly powerful tools for the 500 million people who use ChatGPT every week.”
A Shift Toward Open AI Models?
The funding announcement coincided with OpenAI’s declaration that it is working on a more open generative AI model. This move signals a potential strategic shift as the company faces growing competition in the open-source AI space, particularly from Chinese rival DeepSeek and Meta.
Historically, OpenAI has been a staunch proponent of closed, proprietary AI models, arguing that they offer better security and mitigate risks of misuse by malicious actors or foreign governments. Google, another defender of closed models, has shared this viewpoint.
However, the increasing reluctance of large corporations and governments to build AI solutions on closed models—especially due to concerns over data security—has exerted pressure on OpenAI. Competitors like Meta and DeepSeek have gained traction by offering open models that provide companies with greater control over AI technology and their data.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that downloads of its Llama AI model have surpassed one billion, while DeepSeek’s cost-effective R1 model, launched in January, has significantly impacted the AI industry.
OpenAI CEO Acknowledges the Shift
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the change in strategy, stating on X, “We’ve been thinking about this for a long time, but other priorities took precedence. Now it feels important to do.”
The company has been riding high on the success of its latest image-generation features integrated into ChatGPT, which remains the world’s leading AI chatbot. On Monday, Altman claimed that the new tool added “one million users” in just one hour, reinforcing OpenAI’s dominance in the AI market.
This claim follows Altman’s recent remarks that heavy usage of OpenAI’s image-generation capabilities was straining the company’s graphics processing units (GPUs), highlighting the surging demand for its AI-driven innovations.
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