OpenAI secures up to €93bn in record funding deal

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OpenAI has closed a blockbuster funding round that could raise as much as $110 billion (€93 billion) and values the ChatGPT maker at $730 billion, as the AI start-up tries to wrestle back its lead from rivals Anthropic and Google.

Nvidia, Amazon and SoftBank all participated in the fundraising. The deal marks a stepping stone towards an IPO as early as the end of this year, according to people with knowledge of its plans.

Friday’s funding round dwarfs a $30 billion deal clinched by Anthropic this year and a $41 billion investment into OpenAI in 2025 – at the time the largest start-up investment ever. It gives further evidence of investors’ appetite to fund loss-making AI groups in spite of growing concerns about a bubble in the sector.

The vast majority of OpenAI’s new financing will come from strategic investors rather than venture capital firms.

Nvidia and SoftBank have each committed $30 billion, to be paid in three instalments. Amazon will invest $15 billion initially and another $35 billion either when OpenAI goes public or manages to build the much more powerful AI dubbed “artificial general intelligence”.

Amazon’s investment is part of a broader strategic partnership between the companies announced on Friday which will see OpenAI spend $100 billion on the Big Tech group’s computing power and chips over the next eight years, on top of an existing $38 billion contract. The pair will also develop a custom AI model for Amazon’s consumer products. Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest single shareholder, did not participate in the funding round. OpenAI said its deal with Amazon did not impact Microsoft’s “exclusive license and access to intellectual property across OpenAI models and products.”

A further $10 billion or so in primary equity is expected to come from sovereign wealth funds and investment firms, with commitments being firmed up over the next month, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The new capital adds to the roughly $40 billion OpenAI holds on its balance sheet, girding the company for a period of continued losses until 2030, when executives forecast being free cash flow positive for the first time.

Much of the capital raised by OpenAI will be reinvested into running data centres and buying chips and cloud services from the Big Tech companies participating in the round.

The OpenAI Foundation, spun off from the company last year, will also sell some of its $180 billion stake in the for-profit business on the secondary market if there is more demand from investors, according to the person with knowledge of the plans. It could sell up to $10 billion worth of stock to fund hiring and grant-making activities, they said.

The start-up led by Sam Altman was last valued at $500 billion as part of an employee stock sale in October last year.

OpenAI is in a contest with Google and xAI to develop AI tools for consumers and has increasingly focused on building AI systems for businesses too, an area where Anthropic has established an early lead.

The group expects to generate half of its revenue from enterprises by the end of this year, according to a senior executive, up from about 40 per cent today.

OpenAI’s revenues were roughly $13 billion last year and are forecast to hit $30 billion this year before rising to more than $60 billion in 2027, according to a person with knowledge of the group’s finances.

That forecast relies on securing computing power to train and run its models. In a flurry of deals last year, OpenAI committed to purchase roughly $1.4tn of computing power over eight years.

Those plans have been cut back after a mooted long-term deal with Nvidia, which would have seen the chipmaker invest $100 billion into OpenAI, which in turn would have purchased millions of AI processors, was abandoned.

OpenAI’s purchase commitments until 2030 now total about $600 billion, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deal.

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