OpenAI is making good on its previously announced plan to raise $40 billion in funding led by Softbank. The company just secured $8.3 billion at a $300 billion valuation, according to reporting by The New York Times.
This investment came earlier than previously expected. After pulling in $2.5 billion in venture funding in March, OpenAI had initially planned to raise an additional $7.5 billion by the end of the year, according to the article. Investors including Blackstone and TPG participated in this latest round to support the adoption of ChatGPT among their enterprise clients as OpenAI strives to become a for-profit entity.
Dragoneer Investment Group, a notably early backer of companies like Airbnb, Spotify and Uber, committed $2.8 billion to OpenAI’s latest raise, leading the round. This investment comes alongside a diverse array of growth initiatives from OpenAI in recent months.
As it works to enhance its generative AI technology, the company brought Apple’s former chief design officer onto its team. The company has also partnered with Oracle to build out new data center capacity for its AI infrastructure business, Stargate. Additionally, OpenAI was one of several prominent AI innovators to be awarded a $200 million contract through the U.S. Department of Defense to leverage its cutting-edge technology for agentic workflow automation in certain mission areas.
