OpenAI’s $40 billion SoftBank deal cements its AI dominance at a $300 billion valuation

Amid the recent buzz surrounding the Ghibli Fest, which showcased ChatGPT’s image generation tool, OpenAI has secured a $40 billion investment from SoftBank. This funding, at a post-money valuation of $300 billion, marks the largest private tech deal to date.

“Today, we’re announcing new funding—$40 billion at a $300 billion post-money valuation—which enables us to push the frontiers of AI research even further, scale our compute infrastructure, and deliver increasingly powerful tools for the 500 million people who use ChatGPT every week,” OpenAI stated in a blog post on March 31.

While SoftBank's investment had been in the works for some time, this latest funding round has doubled OpenAI’s valuation. The $40 billion infusion is expected to drive advancements in artificial general intelligence (AGI), with a particular focus on personalized education and enhancing human creativity.

“We’re excited to be working in partnership with SoftBank Group—few companies understand how to scale transformative technology like they do. Their support will help us continue building AI systems that drive scientific discovery, enable personalized education, enhance human creativity, and pave the way toward AGI that benefits all of humanity,” the post added.

OpenAI’s last funding round, in October last year, valued the company at $157 billion. The for-profit AI firm raised $6.6 billion in that round, focusing on strengthening its leadership in frontier AI research, expanding compute capacity, and developing tools that empower people to tackle complex challenges.

With this latest valuation, OpenAI now ranks just behind SpaceX, which holds a $350 billion valuation, placing it among the world’s most highly valued private companies alongside TikTok parent ByteDance.

Other leading enterprise tech firms trailing OpenAI in valuation include Databricks at $62 billion and Anthropic at $61.5 billion. For context, Elon Musk-owned xAI, a direct competitor to OpenAI, is currently valued at $80 billion following its recent acquisition of X, formerly known as Twitter. Notably, in March, Anthropic secured $3.5 billion in funding at a post-money valuation of $61.5 billion. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Cisco Investments, and Salesforce Ventures, among other new and existing investors.