OpenAI valuation hits $300 billion after SoftBank-led funding

The Japanese telecoms operator, together with a group of investors, has just announced another funding round that could pump a further $40 billion into ChatGPT maker, OpenAI. SoftBank itself will stump up an initial $10 billion and has pledged to pour in another $20 billion if OpenAI completes its transformation from a non-profit into a for-profit entity by the end of 2025. If OpenAI doesn’t manage that, then SoftBank will reduce the size of its second investment to a mere $10 billion.

Financial Times revealed that the remaining $10 billion will come from a group that includes OpenAI backer Microsoft, and investment firms, Coatue Management, Altimeter Capital, and Thrive Capital. If the funding round proceeds in its entirety, it will value OpenAI at a whopping $300 billion. If it were a public company, it would rank 28th on the S&P 500, above oil giant Chevron, and nipping at the heels of T-Mobile US.



Its valuation has also nearly doubled since October’s $6.6 billion funding round. It’s hard to know for sure without getting a look at OpenAI’s books, but, likely, this would also see SoftBank become OpenAI’s biggest single backer, overtaking Microsoft, which has to date backed it to the tune of $13 billion.

The development confirms rumours published in late January that SoftBank was mulling an investment in OpenAI, although the oft-quoted anonymous sources underestimated the sum, putting it at up to $25 billion. OpenAI said it will enable it to “push the frontiers of AI research even further, scale our compute infrastructure, and deliver increasingly powerful tools for the 500 million people who use ChatGPT every week. “We’re excited to be working in partnership with SoftBank Group – few companies understand how to scale transformative technology as they do,” it continued.

“Their support will help us continue building AI systems that drive scientific discovery, enable personalised education, enhance human creativity, and pave the way toward AGI (artificial general intelligence) that benefits all of humanity.” That would mark a refreshing departure from deepfakes and intellectual property theft. The latest controversy has seen OpenAI’s image-generating tech rework any picture into the style of the beloved Japanese animation outfit Studio Ghibli (which we used to create the image above).

Opponents of AI art responded by digging up an old quote from Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki himself, who said of AI art in 2016 that it “disgusted him” describing it as “an insult to life.” It is confounding that a technology that professes to promise so much for humanity has – to date – been reduced to meaningless Internet trends. Despite OpenAI’s well-documented missteps, SoftBank remains committed to its AGI/ASI mission.

In addition to ploughing money directly into the company, the telco, along with OpenAI, is also a founding partner of the Stargate Project, which aims to raise a staggering $500 billion to spend on expanding AI infrastructure in the US. In February, SoftBank and OpenAI also unveiled plans for an AI joint venture called Cristal Intelligence that will address the Japanese enterprise market..