OpenAI has closed a US$122 billion (A$177.1 billion) funding round ahead of a potential initial public offering this year.
The funding round, Silicon Valley’s largest ever, valued OpenAI at $852 billion. It was co-led by SoftBank and included Amazon, Nvidia, and Microsoft.
“The fastest way to widen the benefits of AI is to put useful intelligence in people’s hands early and let that access compound globally,” OpenAI wrote in a statement.
“This funding gives us the resources to continue to lead at the scale this moment demands.”
The company is building a “superapp” that will include ChatGPT, its Codex coding tools, web browsing, and agentic features, it also said.
OpenAI is preparing for an IPO and could list as soon as 2026’s fourth quarter, CNBC reported. It is aiming to pitch its AI offerings as productivity tools, CEO of applications Fidji Simo said, and increasingly targeting enterprise customers.
As it has yet to turn a profit, it has also been cutting costs in recent months ahead of an eventual listing.
Sora, an app for AI-generated short videos, was closed down last week, just six months after its launch. It similarly said in March that it would shutter its Instant Checkout feature that enabled users to buy items through ChatGPT.
OpenAI’s previous funding round in February, which featured commitments of $110 billion, valued it at $730 billion.
