OpenAI closes $110 billion funding round in largest private financing

Amazon invested $50 billion, Nvidia invested $30 billion and SoftBank invested $30 billion in the round, OpenAI said in a release on Friday. The investment boosts OpenAI to a $730 billion pre-money valuation, which marks a big jump from its $500 billion valuation in a secondary financing in October. Other investors are expected to join as the round progresses, OpenAI said.

“These partnerships expand our global reach, deepen our infrastructure, and strengthen our balance sheet so we can bring frontier AI to more people, more businesses, and more communities worldwide,” OpenAI said.

In addition to its participation in the funding round, Amazon announced a multi-year strategic partnership with OpenAI. The companies will develop customized models that will help power Amazon’s customer-facing applications as part of the agreement, according to a release.

OpenAI said it is expanding its existing $38 billion agreement with Amazon Web Services by $100 billion over the next eight years. AWS will also serve as the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI’s enterprise platform Frontier, which it unveiled earlier this month.

The companies said Amazon’s $50 billion investment in OpenAI will start with an initial commitment of $15 billion, followed by another $35 billion “in the coming months when certain conditions are met.”

In the three-plus years since launching ChatPGT, OpenAI has reshaped the technology industry and defined the era of generative artificial intelligence. But the company has to keep reeling in cash in order to finance its ambitions, particularly in paying for graphics processing units and other infrastructure.

OpenAI has been telling investors that it’s now targeting roughly $600 billion in total compute spend by 2030, months after CEO Sam Altman touted $1.4 trillion in infrastructure commitments, CNBC was first to report last week.

The company is providing a lower number and more defined timeline for its planned spending, sources told CNBC, as broader concerns mounted that expansion ambitions were too great for the potential revenue that would follow.

While OpenAI continues to lead the consumer AI market, it faces intensifying competition from Google’s Gemini, and is trying to ramp up its offerings for the enterprise market, where rival Anthropic has an early lead.

OpenAI is projecting that its total revenue for 2030 will be more than $280 billion, with nearly equal contributions from its consumer and enterprise businesses, said the sources, who asked not to be named because the information is private.

OpenAI’s latest round marks the largest private financing in history and is a new high-water mark for late-stage tech company valuations. OpenAI first broke the record last year with a $40 billion fundraise led by Softbank. Rival Anthropic has the next highest total, bringing in $30 billion in its latest round, while xAI last raised $20 billion.

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