OpenAI Valued at $840bn in Record Funding Round Backed by Big Tech

OpenAI’s latest funding round valued the ChatGPT maker at $840bn as Big Tech piled into the $110bn blockbuster round, signaling the AI investment race is alive and well despite recent fears of a valuation bubble.

The private capital raise ranks among the largest on record and comes ahead of the company’s anticipated public offering later this year. According to the company, the round includes a $30bn investment from Japan’s SoftBank, $30bn from chipmaker Nvidia, and $50bn from Amazon. Additional investors are expected to participate as the round progresses.

The funding is expected to strengthen OpenAI’s position in an increasingly competitive artificial intelligence market. Rivals such as Anthropic and Google have expanded their offerings in recent months, intensifying pressure on OpenAI to maintain its technological lead.

OpenAI said it plans to deploy Nvidia’s latest Rubin systems, representing five gigawatts of computing capacity, an amount of energy sufficient to power millions of US homes. The company is targeting approximately $600bn in total compute spending through 2030 as it scales its infrastructure.

Nvidia’s investment deepens its financial ties with OpenAI, one of its largest customers. The chipmaker has faced scrutiny from shareholders after announcing it would channel more capital into the AI ecosystem rather than prioritising share buybacks. It was not immediately clear whether Nvidia’s new $30bn commitment replaces or supplements a previously announced plan to invest up to $100bn.

SoftBank said its total investment in OpenAI would rise to $64.6bn, giving it an ownership stake of about 13 per cent.

The funding round also cements a broader partnership with Amazon. Alongside its $50bn investment, OpenAI has agreed to use two gigawatts of computing capacity powered by Amazon’s Trainium AI chips. The companies are expanding an existing cloud agreement, with OpenAI committing to spend an additional $100bn on Amazon Web Services over the next eight years. AWS will serve as the exclusive third-party cloud provider for OpenAI Frontier, the company’s enterprise platform for AI agents.

The expanded partnership does not alter OpenAI’s relationship with Microsoft, which remains the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI’s APIs through Microsoft Azure.

OpenAI said ChatGPT now serves more than 900 million weekly active users and has surpassed 50 million consumer subscribers. January and February are on track to be the company’s strongest months for subscriber growth, underscoring sustained demand even as technology stocks face volatility in 2026.