Re-financing $122 billion, OpenAI becomes the world's highest-valued AI startup

Ask AI · How does OpenAI maintain its industry-leading position in the face of computing power cost challenges?

Jingji Xinwen Reporter | Song Jianan

Valuations for startups in the artificial intelligence field are once again reaching new heights.

On March 31, local time, OpenAI announced the completion of a private funding round totaling $122 billion, with a post-money valuation of $852 billion, setting a new global record for AI company valuations.

According to OpenAI, this round of financing was led by Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank, with the company’s long-term partner Microsoft also participating. SoftBank, along with a16z, DeShaw Ventures, MGX, TPG, and institutions under T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., jointly led this funding round.

In addition, many global institutions participated, including Altimeter, Appaloosa LP, ARK Invest, BlackRock, Blackstone, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, UC Investments (University of California Chief Investment Officer’s Office), and subsidiaries of Winslow Capital.

Notably, this is OpenAI’s first time opening participation channels to investors through banks, raising over $3 billion from individual investors. On the same day, OpenAI also announced it would be included in multiple exchange-traded funds (ETFs) managed by ARK Invest, further expanding ownership.

OpenAI has increased its existing revolving credit line to approximately $4.7 billion, providing greater flexibility for its ongoing large-scale investments. This credit line is supported by a global syndicate including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Mizuho Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, UBS, HSBC, and Santander. As of the completion of the transaction, the credit line remains unused.

Tracing its funding history, from transforming into a hybrid profit model in 2019 with a $1 billion investment from Microsoft, to completing a $40 billion financing round in 2025, with its valuation surpassing $300 billion, and now reaching $852 billion, this AI giant has achieved a seven-year journey from a non-profit lab to the world’s highest-valued AI company, with both funding scale and valuation growth setting industry records.

The completion of this round of financing not only consolidates OpenAI’s position as an industry leader but also pushes the AI “arms race” to new heights. With a valuation of $852 billion, it has far surpassed competitor Anthropic (about $387 billion) by more than double.

Latest data disclosed by OpenAI shows the company’s monthly revenue has reached $2 billion, with an annual growth rate four times that of internet giants like Google and Meta. Its “compute investment - model iteration - product popularization - revenue growth” flywheel continues to operate at high speed. By 2025, its compute capacity will reach 1.9 GW, a 9.5-fold increase from 2023, with revenue growing tenfold to $20 billion.

Its flagship product, ChatGPT, currently has over 900 million weekly active users and more than 50 million subscribers. Monthly web traffic and mobile session volumes are six times those of the second-ranked AI application, and search usage has nearly tripled in a year. OpenAI also states that its advertising pilot project achieved over $100 million in annual recurring revenue in less than six weeks.

More critically, this massive funding further paves the way for its highly anticipated IPO — the company has recruited several finance executives related to listing and has engaged in informal talks with Wall Street investment banks. Market expectations suggest it could go public on the NASDAQ as early as Q4 2026.

However, behind the high valuation and fundraising, OpenAI still faces multiple severe challenges, with the most pressing being compute power and cost control. AI model training demands enormous chip resources. Although the company has formed a strategic partnership with Nvidia and plans to build a 10 GW data center, hardware procurement and data center operating costs remain high. API pricing is still about five times that of domestic AI companies like ByteDance, limiting large-scale adoption by small and medium-sized enterprises.

In terms of competitive landscape, rivals are also moving swiftly: Anthropic is pushing a $60 billion fundraising plan with an expected IPO by the end of 2026; Google’s Gemini series models continue to pressure enterprise clients; Elon Musk’s new entity combining SpaceX and xAI plans to IPO within the year, with a valuation potentially exceeding $1.75 trillion. The intensive IPO activity among these three AI giants will test the liquidity of the tech stock market.

Capital’s frantic bets essentially reflect strong confidence in the commercialization prospects of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), but also indicate that industry competition will shift from technological breakthroughs to a comprehensive contest of “compute power, capital, and ecosystems.”

For OpenAI, how to convert capital into technological barriers and market share, and to find a balance between commercialization and technological innovation, remains a key question it must answer after going public.