OpenAI valued at $1 trillion after record $157 billion funding round

San Francisco - OpenAI has completed a deal to raise US$122 billion (S$157 billion) from investors at an US$852 billion (S$1 trillion) valuation, in a record-breaking funding round that bolsters its costly push for more chips, data centres and talent.

The bulk of the financing, which had been in the works for months, came from three large tech companies. Amazon.com agreed to invest US$50 billion in the round, while Nvidia and SoftBank Group each put in US$30 billion.

A large portion of Amazon’s investment – US$35 billion – is contingent on OpenAI going public or reaching the technological milestone of artificial general intelligence.

The ChatGPT maker also secured funding from a long list of other prominent backers, including Andreessen Horowitz, Abu Dhabi’s MGX, D.E. Shaw Ventures, TPG and T. Rowe Price.

In a first for the company, OpenAI raised more than US$3 billion from individual investors through bank channels. The start-up also said it will be included in several exchange-traded funds managed by Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest, with the goal of offering more people exposure to the AI firm. 

OpenAI chief financial officer Sarah Friar said the financing “blows out of the water even the largest IPO that’s ever been done”. The deal, she said, is meant to give the company “a lot of flexibility” to invest in computing resources and its AI road map at a time of broader uncertainty for the public markets, including from the Iran war. 

The AI developer has previously said it is committed to spending more than US$1.4 trillion on physical infrastructure in the coming years to support its AI software. To finance those bets, OpenAI and rival Anthropic have tapped an overlapping group of venture funds and tech companies, including their cloud and chip suppliers like Amazon and Nvidia. The complex web of tie-ups has sparked concerns about the fallout if the technology doesn’t match today’s lofty expectations.

The two start-ups are also expected to go public as soon as 2026, bringing in additional capital and testing Wall Street’s appetite for unprofitable but fast-growing AI businesses.

Ms Friar said OpenAI needs to be “public-company capable”, referring to it as “good hygiene” for a business, without sharing specific details of plans for an initial public offering (IPO). She also said an IPO can serve as a “trust-building moment” for a firm. 

OpenAI said on March 31 that it is generating US$2 billion in revenue each month. The company is also seeing traction among business customers.

Enterprise sales now make up 40 per cent of its revenue, the company said, with that figure expected to increase to 50 per cent by year’s end. 

The company’s financial commitment from Amazon also comes with a cloud agreement to host and distribute OpenAI’s models for enterprise customers. That partnership will include a revenue-sharing agreement, Ms Friar said, without disclosing how much. 

OpenAI has stepped up its revenue push in 2026 by introducing advertising in ChatGPT, an option that chief executive Sam Altman had once described as a “last resort”. The company, which has traditionally relied on a subscription model, said its ads pilot programme hit US$100 million in annualised revenue after just six weeks.

In recent weeks, OpenAI has moved to streamline its sprawling mix of products. The company said it is discontinuing support for the Sora AI video generator. It is also developing a desktop application to bring together its chatbot, coding tool and web browser – a product that OpenAI refers to in its blog post as “our SuperApp”.

“Users do not want disconnected tools. They want a single system that can understand intent, take action, and operate across applications, data, and workflows,” the company said in a blog post on March 31, confirming the plans. BLOOMBERG