OpenAI’s latest funding round valued the ChatGPT maker at US$840-billion as Big Tech and Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank piled into the $110-billion blockbuster round, signalling the AI investment race is alive and well despite recent fears of a valuation bubble.
The funding round — one of the largest private capital raises on record — with various strings and conditions attached that come in phases, includes a $30-billion investment from SoftBank, $30-billion from Nvidia and $50-billion from Amazon.
It comes ahead of the AI start-up’s expected mega-IPO this year to meet the ChatGPT maker’s surging compute and R&D costs.
More investors are expected to join the round as it progresses, OpenAI said in a statement on Friday.
With the latest injection, SoftBank’s investment in OpenAI is set to be $64.6-billion, representing an ownership interest of about 13%, the Japanese conglomerate said. The investment will come in three phases throughout this year, with the first tranche of $10-billion expected to close by 1 April.
As a result of the investment, SoftBank will gain preferred shares that will be converted into common shares of OpenAI upon an IPO.
SoftBank said the $30-billion is expected to be financed initially through bridge loans and capital raise from major financial institutions. The Japanese investment giant has sold stakes in its existing investments, including Nvidia, in order to fund its check into OpenAI.
Circular financing
The infusion will help OpenAI secure advanced AI chips and the computing capacity it needs to maintain its lead position in the AI industry, especially as competition heats up from Anthropic and Google.
It also exacerbates Wall Street concerns about “circular” financing agreements, where firms invest in and sign supply deals with each other, inflating demand and revenue.
After years of outsized gains, tech stocks have suffered sharp declines in 2026 as investors question whether AI investments will generate sufficient returns to justify lofty valuations.
Read: Bill Gates, OpenAI team up for AI health push in Africa
Nvidia was punished by shareholders this week after the chip maker said it would pour money into the AI ecosystem, instead of returning cash to shareholders. Nvidia’s investment in OpenAI gives the chip company a financial stake in one of its largest customers, tightening their already intertwined relationship.
OpenAI said on Friday it would use Nvidia’s latest Rubin systems, representing 5GW of computing capacity — enough energy to power millions of US households.
It was not immediately clear whether Nvidia’s $30-billion investment replaced its earlier commitment announced in September under which Nvidia was set to invest up to $100-billion in the start-up. OpenAI and Nvidia did not immediately respond to requests for clarification.
The new investment is crucial for OpenAI. The launch of Google’s Gemini 3 in November has given the Alphabet-owned company a stronger footing, while Anthropic has cemented its lead in the enterprise AI market with its specialised coding tool.
OpenAI, which is yet to turn a profit, is targeting roughly $600-billion in total compute spend through to 2030, a source told Reuters last week.
Along with the $50-billion investment, OpenAI and Amazon have also struck a deal in which OpenAI will utilise 2GW of computing capacity powered by Amazon’s in-house Trainium AI chips.
The companies are also expanding their $38-billion cloud deal signed last year, with OpenAI saying it would spend an additional $100-billion on Amazon Web Services over the next eight years. As well, OpenAI will work with Amazon to develop customized models for the e-commerce company’s engineering teams.
Amazon will start with an initial $15-billion investment, followed by another $35-billion in the coming months when certain conditions are met, the companies said.
Microsoft
AWS will be the exclusive third-party cloud provider for OpenAI Frontier, the ChatGPT maker’s enterprise platform for building and running AI agents.
Microsoft, in a joint statement with OpenAI, sought to outline the limits to the work that Amazon and OpenAI can undertake together without involving Azure, Microsoft’s cloud unit.
The partnership does not change OpenAI’s relationship with Microsoft, with Microsoft Azure still the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI’s APIs that provide access to OpenAI’s models, the companies said. OpenAI’s first-party products, including Frontier, will continue to be hosted on Azure.
Read: OpenAI chip rethink signals turning point in AI hardware market
ChatGPT serves more than 900 million weekly active users, OpenAI said on Friday, adding that it has surpassed 50 million consumer subscribers. January and February are on track to become the largest months for new subscriber additions, it said. — Deborah Sophia, Akash Sriram and Krystal Hu, with Stephen Nellis, (c) 2026 Reuters
Get breaking news from TechCentral on WhatsApp. Sign up here.
