OpenAI nears record $100 billion funding round led by tech giants

Summary

OpenAI is nearing the first phase of a new funding round that could raise more than $100 billion and value the company at over $850 billion. The deal is anchored by major tech players including Amazon, SoftBank, Nvidia and Microsoft, at a time when OpenAI is planning enormous investments in computing infrastructure.

In practice

The new round is expected to keep OpenAI’s pre-money valuation at $730 billion, with the overall valuation potentially topping $850 billion as total commitments approach or surpass $100 billion. The initial tranche centers on strategic corporate investors such as Amazon, SoftBank, Nvidia and Microsoft, and is expected to be finalized by the end of February.

Nvidia is considering investing up to $30 billion, which CEO Jensen Huang called potentially “the largest investment we’ve ever made”. Amazon is in talks to invest more than $20 billion, tied to a broader agreement that expands OpenAI’s use of Amazon’s chips and cloud services, while longtime partner Microsoft, which has exclusive rights to resell OpenAI models to cloud customers, is expected to invest less than $10 billion.

A second phase of the deal is set to bring in venture capital firms, sovereign wealth funds and other financial investors, which could push total fundraising well above $100 billion. The new capital follows a $40 billion round completed in early 2025 and led by SoftBank, which valued OpenAI at $300 billion and gave the Japanese investor about an 11% stake.

Despite generating an estimated $20 billion in annualized revenue, OpenAI remains unprofitable and does not expect to turn a profit before 2030. The company plans to spend roughly $1.4 trillion on infrastructure in the coming years, including its $500 billion Stargate data center initiative with Oracle and SoftBank, which has expanded to nearly seven gigawatts of planned capacity across sites in Texas, New Mexico and Ohio.

Context

The size of this funding round is a live test of investor appetite for artificial intelligence as the costs of building and running cutting-edge models soar. OpenAI faces intense competition from companies such as Alphabet and Anthropic, in a landscape where access to capital and large-scale data center capacity may determine who leads the market.

The 2025 SoftBank-led $40 billion deal was already the largest private tech financing on record and marked a significant step-up in OpenAI’s valuation. Since then, CEO Sam Altman has been courting investors worldwide, including trips to the United Arab Emirates to meet sovereign wealth funds, and an initial public offering is being discussed for as soon as 2026 or 2027, with some estimates suggesting OpenAI could eventually reach a $1 trillion valuation.

Why it matters

• Signals how far big tech companies are willing to go financially to secure an edge in the AI race.
• Underscores that next-generation AI models will demand unprecedented levels of compute and energy infrastructure.
• Shows that even fast-growing AI leaders rely on massive external capital to fund long-term ambitions.
• Raises questions about how much power over core AI infrastructure will be concentrated in a small group of global tech and finance players.