OpenAI reportedly set to be valued at more than $300bn

31 Jan 2025

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2017. Image: Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch (CC by 2.0)

With this new investment, SoftBank is set to usurp Microsoft as OpenAI’s biggest backer.

OpenAI is reportedly in talks to raise up to $40bn, taking the nine-year-old start-up to a $340bn valuation. The new funding round would more than double OpenAI’s previous valuation just four months ago, when the ChatGPT-maker was pegged at $157bn after a $6.6bn raise.

SoftBank is set to lead the latest funding round, the Wall Street Journal – which broke the story – reported. While, last week, the Financial Times reported that the Japanese investment firm would be pumping between up to $25bn into OpenAI.

With the new multibillion-dollar investment, SoftBank will usurp Microsoft (who has invested $14bn into the AI start-up) as OpenAI’s biggest investor.

According to CNBC – which claims the latest valuation could be as much as $340bn – a part of the investment could be used by OpenAI for Stargate, a $500bn joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, MGX and SoftBank to develop AI infrastructure.

SoftBank was also a leading investor in OpenAI’s last funding round in October. The round was led by venture capital firm Thrive Capital and included big name investors Nvidia, Fidelity, Khosla Ventures and Microsoft, while Apple reportedly dropped out of the round just days prior.

However, OpenAI, which is credited with bringing generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) products to the mainstream, is facing a new competitor from China. DeepSeek has made headlines over the last two weeks with its new R1 reasoning model showcasing capabilities on a par with ChatGPT, supposedly at a fraction of the cost.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who praised DeepSeek for its “impressive” and cheap reasoning model, has since gone on the offensive, accusing the Chinese start-up of using OpenAI’s models to train R1.

Earlier this week, OpenAI claimed to have evidence that DeepSeek ‘distilled’ or leveraged outputs from ChatGPT, into its smaller model, reducing costs and latency.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has joined with OpenAI’s investigation into whether DeepSeek obtained the start-up’s technology in an unauthorised manner.

Recently, OpenAI launched a preview of its Operator AI agent, a model which can interact with a webpage independently. According to the company, Operator can handle a variety of “repetitive browser tasks”, such as filling out forms, ordering groceries and even creating memes.

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2017. Image: Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch via Flickr (CC by 2.0)

Suhasini Srinivasaragavan is a sci-tech reporter for Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com