OpenAI's $110 billion funding pushes its valuation to $840 billion with backing from Amazon, Nvidia, SoftBank

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on Friday that the company has raised $110 billion in a blockbuster funding round that would value the ChatGPT maker at $840 billion.

The round, among the largest private capital raises on record , includes a $30 billion investment from SoftBank, $30 billion from Nvidia, and $50 billion from Amazon, Reuters reported.

The funding comes ahead of the AI startup's widely anticipated mega-IPO later this year, with additional investors expected to join as the round progresses, OpenAI said.

“We have raised a $110 billion round of funding from Amazon, NVIDIA, and SoftBank. We are grateful for the support from our partners, and have a lot of work to do to bring you the tools you deserve,” Altman wrote in an X (formerly Twitter) post on Friday.

AI investment frenzy in big tech

Big Tech companies and deep-pocketed investors such as SoftBank are racing to ink partnerships with OpenAI, which is spending heavily on building data centres, the news agency said.

By tightening ties with the AI startup, these investors are betting they can secure preferential access to cutting-edge AI models and infrastructure, a potential competitive edge in the increasingly crowded AI race.

At the same time, this AI investment frenzy is strengthening OpenAI's own position. The fresh capital will help it unlock advanced AI chips and expand the computing capacity that it needs to maintain its pole position in the AI industry.

This is critical for OpenAI to maintain its leadership as competition in the AI industry is heating up from rivals such as Claude chatbot maker Anthropic and Google's Gemini.

Anthropic's Claude recently made headlines after the company released a new AI tool, Claude Code Security, that helps teams find and fix security issues that traditional methods often miss. The move underlined the company’s rapid growth and competitive push in the AI market.

Sam Altman on partnerships

In the statement announcing the collaboration, OpenAI CEO highlighted the strategic importance of the partnership with Amazon. “We are excited to partner with Amazon to bring a new generation of products to market, especially around new enterprise products like the stateful runtime environment. We are also very excited to make great use of Tranium,” he said.

He also commented on OpenAI's ties with Microsoft, stressing their “great relationship.” Altman said that his company's stateless API will remain exclusive to Azure, as it seeks to build out much more capacity with them.

“NVIDIA has long been one of our most important partners, and their chips are the foundation of AI computing. We are grateful for their continued trust in us, and excited to run their systems in AWS. Their upcoming generations should be great,” Altman wrote in the X post.

He described SoftBank as an “incredible and high-conviction partner," adding that OpenAI is excited to welcome it again as a major investor, and to expand collaboration across its broader ecosystem.