Sources said
Soft Silver Sources told CNBC's David Faber that it is about to complete a $40 billion primary investment in OpenAI at a currency valuation of $260 billion.
CNBC's David Faber reported on Friday that SoftBank will pay the money, meaning OpenAI's currency is valued at $300 billion over the next 12 to 24 months, with the initial payment starting in the spring. SoftBank will be able to syndicate more than $10 billion.
The new funding will mean SoftBank surpasses Microsoft as its top supporter of AI startups. In October, Openai was last valued at $157 billion by private investors.
Initially, the round would award Openai a valuation of $340 billion, but sources familiar with the matter later told CNBC that the amount would be close to $300 billion.
Sources told CNBC that some of the funds are expected to be used on Openai’s commitment to Stargate. Stargate is a joint venture between SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle announced in January by President Donald Trump. The plan calls for billions of dollars invested in U.S. AI infrastructure.
Openai launched the Chatgpt chatbot at the end of 2022, starting the generated AI competition. Since then, the company has gone with Elon Musk's Xai as well as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Yuan and humans. The AI market for production is expected to earn $1 trillion in revenue within a decade.
The latest funding round comes after SoftBank’s pledge in February spent $3 billion on Openai’s Tech on its own and its subsidiaries, including British chip designer Arm. Softbank and Openai also announced a joint venture called “SB Openai Japan”, which will market Openai's corporate technology to Japanese companies.
Openai released Chatgpt Gov, an AI platform built specifically for the U.S. government in January. The startup launches a new platform that is safer than Chatgpt Enterprise. The company said Chatgpt Gov will allow government agencies to feed “non-public, sensitive information” into OpenAI's model while running in their own secure hosting environment.
What the government provides is a series of actions by Openai and CEO Sam Altman, which appears to be aimed at resting Trump. Altman contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, attended the event along with other technical CEOs and publicly expressed his admiration for the president.
Openai's new funding comes after Chinese rival DeepSeek has lifted its app to the top of the Apple App Store rankings after its debut. DeepSeek's breakthrough R1 model shocked the U.S. market in its report, with its powerful model being trained at a fraction of the cost of U.S. competitors.
Altman described DeepSeek's R1 as “impressive” and wrote on X: “We'll obviously offer a better model and have legitimate people who can have a new competitor!”
watch: Sam Altman: Openai has been on the “wrong side of history” and has been deeply involved
