OpenAI Closes Highly Anticipated Funding Round, Valued at $157 Billion
OpenAI, the company that introduced ChatGPT to the world in late 2022, has closed its highly anticipated funding round, valued at $157 billion. The company has raised $6.6 billion from a diverse range of investment firms and large technology companies. Although OpenAI did not disclose the names of its investors in its press release yesterday, global news sources have cited Microsoft, Nvidia, SoftBank, and Thrive as contributors. To recall, OpenAI was valued at $80 billion at the beginning of 2024, up from $29 billion in 2023.
OpenAI's rapid ascent is the most significant in the technology industry over the past two years. It has brought the concept of generative artificial intelligence to the forefront and paved the way for tens of billions of dollars in investments in this technology. According to the company, the new funding will enable it to double its AI research efforts, increase its computing capacity, and continue building tools that help people solve complex problems.
OpenAI forecasts revenue of $11.6 billion in 2025, up from $3.7 billion in 2024. However, generating these revenues is extremely costly. OpenAI needs to increase its purchases of Nvidia's graphics processing units to train and run its large language models. It's no wonder, then, that the chip manufacturer contributed to this funding round. Similarly, Microsoft, a key partner and cloud customer of OpenAI, also participated in the round.
The company boasts 250 million active weekly users of ChatGPT, 11 million subscribers, and over 1 million paying professional users. This is just the beginning, as the arrival of this intelligence is set to change our world even more in the years to come.
