one year on
OpenAI closes record $40B funding round at $300B valuation
SoftBank leads with $30B; $18B earmarked for Stargate; for-profit conversion deadline of Dec 31 could cut SoftBank's stake to $20B.
OpenAI announced Monday it has closed a $40 billion funding round, the largest private tech deal on record, valuing the ChatGPT maker at $300 billion post-money.
SoftBank contributed $30 billion, with a syndicate including Microsoft, Coatue, Altimeter, and Thrive adding $10 billion. About $18 billion is earmarked for the Stargate AI data center joint venture. However, SoftBank disclosed its investment could drop to $20 billion if OpenAI fails to convert to a for-profit entity by December 31, a restructuring that requires approval from Microsoft, the California attorney general, and has been challenged in court by Elon Musk.
The round nearly triples the previous record — Ant Group’s $14 billion raise in 2018 — and values OpenAI behind only SpaceX and TikTok parent ByteDance among private companies. ChatGPT now claims 500 million weekly users, up from 400 million last month, and OpenAI expects 2025 revenue of $12.7 billion, triple the previous year.
On X, CEO Sam Altman noted the company added one million users in the last hour, contrasting with the five days it took after the initial ChatGPT launch. The announcement comes as AI competitors from Google to Anthropic accelerate product releases and as CoreWeave stumbled in its public debut, signaling a mixed market for AI investments.
The record
Wrote on X that ChatGPT added one million users in the last hour, compared to five days to reach that milestone at launch.
One year later — open only if you can handle spoilers
The for-profit restructuring deadline became a point of contention; OpenAI eventually met the deadline with a revised structure that satisfied investors but left some governance questions unresolved. The Stargate project proceeded more slowly than anticipated, with about $10 billion deployed by mid-2026.