OpenAI has signed a deal to raise $122 billion at a valuation of $852 billion. This is the company’s largest funding round to date as it plans to enter the public markets this year.
This round will further add to OpenAI’s war chest as it spends billions on AI chips, expanding its data centers and hiring top talent.
SoftBank co-led the round with Andreessen Horowitz, DE Shaw Ventures, MGX, TPG, and T. Rowe Price Associates, with participation from Amazon, Nvidia, and Microsoft.
About $3 billion was raised from private investors through banking channels. OpenAI will also be included in several ETFs managed by ARK Invest, giving more people access to shares in private companies and expanding the shareholder base ahead of an upcoming IPO.
OpenAI also announced that it has expanded its revolving credit facility to approximately $4.7 billion with support from some of the world’s top banks. The company said the facility remains unused, suggesting it is increasing its financial flexibility by increasing spending on computing and infrastructure rather than addressing short-term liquidity needs.
The company’s press release about the increase is more like a draft S-1 than a typical blog post. It uses flywheel metaphors a lot, digs into revenue per compute unit, and provides the kind of TAM justification language that institutional investors would drool over.
OpenAI posted an update on its revenue and user numbers, claiming it generates $2 billion in monthly revenue and competing against its competitors, saying, “At this stage, we are growing revenue four times faster than companies like Alphabet and Meta, which defined the internet and mobile era.”
The company also said it has more than 900 million weekly active users and more than 50 million subscribers in the consumer AI space, and search usage has nearly tripled in the last year. OpenAI said its ad pilot generated more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue within six weeks, opening up a potentially significant revenue stream for the company as it built a user base without ads.
The AI giant claims that its momentum is reflected on its business side, where it now accounts for 40% of its revenue (up from around 30% last year) and is “on track to reach consumer parity by the end of 2026.” The company says growth across agent workflows is being driven by its latest model, GPT-5.4.
Finally, OpenAI also calls itself an “AI super app” and has made it clear that it wants to own the primary interface for people to use AI.
All of these add up to one message. OpenAI is building a public market narrative in real time, and this round is as much about anchoring expectations for the IPO as it is about the capital itself.
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