OpenAI raises $110b in record funding round

OpenAI announced Friday a massive $110 billion funding round valuing the ChatGPT maker at $730 billion, with SoftBank, Nvidia and Amazon each making multi-billion-dollar commitments as the artificial intelligence company races to meet surging global demand.

The investment round -- one of the largest in Silicon Valley history -- includes $30 billion from Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, $30 billion from chip giant Nvidia, and up to $50 billion from Amazon, with additional investors expected to join as the round progresses.

Alongside the capital injection, OpenAI announced strategic partnerships with both Amazon, the world’s biggest cloud company through its AWS division, and Nvidia, whose AI chips remain unparalleled in their capacity for AI training.

“SoftBank, Nvidia, and Amazon are long-term partners who share our ambition to turn real scientific progress into systems that deliver meaningful benefits for people at global scale,” OpenAI said in a statement.

The eye-watering level of funding reflects the soaring costs of computing power and comes amid lingering questions about whether OpenAI and other AI companies can generate sufficient revenue to cover those costs.

The Amazon investment will begin with $15 billion, followed by another $35 billion in the coming months when certain conditions are met, the companies said.

According to reports, these include OpenAI going public or achieving artificial general intelligence, a sometimes ill-defined standard of AI capability that more closely matches human-level ability.