Sam Altman, the chief executive officer of OpenAI. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
There are moments that redefine what scale looks like. This is one of them.
OpenAI announced Tuesday it has closed $122 billion in committed capital at a post-money valuation of $852 billion - the largest private funding round in the history of the technology industry and the highest valuation ever achieved by a pre-IPO company. The round came in $12 billion above the $110 billion figure OpenAI announced in February.
Three technology giants anchored the deal. Amazon committed $50 billion, though $35 billion of that is contingent on OpenAI completing an IPO or reaching the technological milestone of artificial general intelligence. Nvidia and SoftBank each invested $30 billion. Microsoft, OpenAI's longest-standing backer with more than $13 billion invested to date, also participated though the amount was not disclosed.
A broader roster of institutional investors joined the round including Andreessen Horowitz, D.E. Shaw Ventures, ARK Invest, Blackstone, BlackRock, Coatue, Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, Temasek, and dozens of others. For the first time in OpenAI's history, more than $3 billion was raised from individual investors through bank channels. OpenAI will also be included in several ARK Invest ETFs, extending retail ownership of the private company before its anticipated IPO.
The Business Behind the Valuation
The raise is not happening in a vacuum. OpenAI is now generating $2 billion in monthly revenue - up from $1 billion per quarter at the end of 2024. The company claims it is growing revenue four times faster than Alphabet and Meta grew during their defining eras. ChatGPT serves 900 million weekly active users and more than 50 million paying subscribers. Enterprise now accounts for more than 40% of revenue and is on track to reach parity with consumer by end of 2026.
The company's APIs process more than 15 billion tokens per minute. Codex, its coding agent, serves 2 million weekly users - up 5x in three months with 70% month-over-month growth. An advertising pilot launched in February is already generating more than $100 million in annualized revenue within six weeks.
What the Money Is For
OpenAI is building infrastructure at a scale that requires partners to hold its hand. Its cloud infrastructure spans Microsoft Azure, Oracle, AWS, CoreWeave, and Google Cloud simultaneously. Its chip suppliers include Nvidia, AMD, AWS Trainium, Cerebras, and Broadcom. Its data center partners are Oracle, SoftBank, and SBE. The capital will fund continued expansion across all of these.
The company is also building what it calls a unified AI superapp - a single product combining ChatGPT, Codex, browsing, and agentic capabilities into one interface. OpenAI's stated vision is that users do not want disconnected tools; they want a single system that can understand intent and take action across applications, data, and workflows.
The revolving credit facility has been expanded to $4.7 billion, supported by JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. It remains undrawn.
At $852 billion, OpenAI is now valued on par with Berkshire Hathaway and sits just below the trillion-dollar threshold that only the largest public companies in the world have crossed. The IPO, when it comes, will be one of the most watched market events in a generation.
