OpenAI on Monday announced a new $40 billion USD (about $57 billion CAD) investment deal with SoftBank Group that values the ChatGPT maker at a whopping $300 billion USD (about $429 billion CAD).
According to OpenAI, the fresh funding will be used to power AI research, expand the company’s compute capacity, and improve its ability to serve ChatGPT’s 500 million weekly users.
“We’re excited to be working in partnership with SoftBank Group—few companies understand how to scale transformative technology like they do,” the AI giant said in its announcement. “Their support will help us continue building AI systems that drive scientific discovery, enable personalized education, enhance human creativity, and pave the way toward AGI that benefits all of humanity.”
The news comes as OpenAI aims to restructure into a for-profit organization this year. OpenAI previously closed a $6.6 billion USD funding round in October of last year at a $157 billion USD valuation, under terms that it would complete its for-profit transformation within two years.
SoftBank’s $300 billion USD valuation of OpenAI stands in stark contrast to a recent $97.4 billion USD offer for the company from Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk, who was also one of OpenAI’s original founders.
OpenAI recently launched GPT 4.5, its most advanced AI model yet. The company last month also unveiled next-generation speech and voice models.
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