Report: OpenAI Aims to Raise $40 Billion in New Funding Round
OpenAI is reportedly in talks for a $40 billion funding round that would value it at $300 billion.
The round would be led by SoftBank, which would invest between $15 billion and $25 billion, with the rest coming from other investors, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Thursday (Jan. 30), citing unnamed sources.
Some of the capital raised in the round would go toward the $18 billion OpenAI has committed to contribute to the Stargate AI infrastructure joint venture, which also includes SoftBank, according to the report.
The funding would also support OpenAI’s money-losing business operations, per the report.
OpenAI did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.
The Financial Times (FT) reported Thursday that SoftBank is in discussions to invest between $15 billion and $25 billion in OpenAI.
The investment could bring the amount SoftBank has invested in its relationship with OpenAI to $40 billion and would make the Japanese conglomerate OpenAI’s largest investor, overtaking Microsoft.
A valuation of $300 billion would make OpenAI the world’s second-most valuable startup, behind Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and would double the valuation OpenAI achieved when it raised $6.6 billion in October, according to the WSJ report.
This news came days after tech stocks plunged after China’s DeepSeek launched a new AI model that reportedly sowed doubts about the United States’ ability to maintain its position as AI leader by spending billions on chips.
The new DeepSeek model achieved comparable performance to those of OpenAI and Meta but reportedly claims to use substantially fewer Nvidia chips. The model also supplanted OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the most popular free app on the Apple App Store.
The news of a potential new funding round also comes about a week after President Donald Trump announced Stargate, an up-to-$500 billion project that aims to build big AI-focused data centers in the U.S.
Equity partners in Stargate are SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX, an AI-focused sovereign wealth fund in Dubai. OpenAI co-leads the venture with SoftBank and will have operational responsibility for the project. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son will chair Stargate. Oracle, Arm, Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI will be the project’s initial technology partners.
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