OpenAI raises up to $110bn at $730bn valuation, sharpens IPO roadmap

OpenAI raised up to 110 billion dollars, reaching a 730 billion valuation. Nvidia, SoftBank, Amazon, and sovereign funds invested. OpenAI deepens ties with Amazon and eyes IPO by late 2026. By CNBCTV18.com OpenAI has closed a mega funding round of as much as $110 billion, taking the company’s valuation to $730 billion. The financing is dominated by strategic investors. Nvidia and SoftBank have each pledged $30 billion, to be released in tranches, while Amazon will put in $15 billion initially with another $35 billion contingent on a public listing or the achievement of artificial general intelligence (AGI) milestones, according to a Financial Times report. An additional $10 billion is likely to come from sovereign funds and large investment firms, it added. The transaction is being viewed in the market as a key step towards a potential IPO as early as late 2026. Alongside the investment, OpenAI has deepened its commercial ties with Amazon. The company plans to spend $100 billion over eight years on Amazon’s cloud and semiconductor infrastructure, over and above an existing $38 billion commitment and will jointly build a specialised AI model for Amazon’s consumer platforms, the FT report said. Microsoft, which still is the single largest shareholder, has not joined this round but retains its existing licensing and product access arrangements. The new funds add to nearly $40 billion already on the balance sheet and will largely be channelled into data centres, compute capacity and chips, as OpenAI prepares for several more years of negative cash flow before targeting break-even around 2030, as per the FT report. Revenues are projected to rise from about $13 billion last year to roughly $30 billion in 2026, and cross $60 billion by 2027, driven increasingly by enterprise demand, which is expected to account for half of total income by year-end. The company has, however, moderated its long-term infrastructure commitments to around $600 billion through 2030, reflecting a more measured expansion amid intensifying competition from Google, Anthropic and xAI, the FT report said. (Edited by : Ajay Vaishnav )