The money raised by the ChatGPT maker values the company at $300 billion, and is the most money raised by a private tech company ever, as it was the last time they raised a mere $6.6 billion back in October 2024.
In fact, the funding is three times the previous high note in funding for tech companies.
Softbank betting big
75% of the funding, or $30 billion, comes from SoftBank, while the remaining $10B is from a consortium containing Microsoft and Thrive, reports Bloomberg.
Softbank is also huge funder of the $100 billion Stargate project aiming to build out datacenters for AI computing.
— This will 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, says OpenAIs announcement.
«Biblical» demand for the imgen
Sam Altman says the company added 1 million users an hour yesterday, due to «biblical demand» for their image generator, that was just released for the free tier on Chatgpt.com:
chatgpt image gen now rolled out to all free users!
— Sam Altman (@sama) April 1, 2025
The company says they generated $3.7 billion in revenue last year, that should triple to $12.7B by the end of this year. Then, they expect to more than double that next year to almost $30 billion.
«Open» model coming
As Openai with its 500 million users is feeling the competition from open source models from the likes of Meta and DeepSeek, who release open weight models you can use on your computer, they have a new plan in the works.
An «Open weight model» is coming, that you can download, tinker with and run on your computer, and it should be state of the art:
— We are excited to make this a very, very good model!, tweeted Sam Altman last night, adding that they are seeking developer input for it.
The announcement is therefore coupled with an «Open model feedback» form, saying OpenAI will hold feedback forums for registered developers in the coming weeks.
The actual license the model would be released under unclear, but it would be generous and not as closed as what Meta uses, limiting the use for large organizations, for example. Here’s another Altman-tweet from last night:
we will not do anything silly like saying that you cant use our open model if your service has more than 700 million monthly active users.
we want everyone to use it!
— Sam Altman (@sama) March 31, 2025
Altman also says that they will try make the model robust and says that they are aware that it will be changed and modified by developers, but this is really a five ton gorilla entering the chat on open source models, and it will exciting to see how it holds up against the current competition.
See also: OpenAI drastically improves ChatGPT image generation
Read more: Funding: Bloomberg, Axios, Washington Post, Nytimes. Open model: TechCrunch, Wired. Million users: Engadget.