OpenAI sets a new record: raises $40 billion and leaps to the second between most valued private companies in the world. With a valuation now hitting $300 billion, nearly double the $157 billion it previously valued in October, the ChatGPT company is fast approaching $350 billion. SpaceX and aligns with ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.
Behind this huge injection of capital, there is a radical change: OpenAI will have to turn from non-profit to for-profit corporation. A step that has already caused strong friction among the co-founders, including Elon Musk, who even tried to stop the move by taking the matter to court. The Tesla boss also presented a $97,4 billion proposal to buy back the nonprofit assets, but his offer was rejected by OpenAI’s board, marking a deep rift between the billionaire and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
OpenAI: SoftBank Leads $40 Billion Round
Leading this massive fundraiser is Softbank, the Japanese giant that also owns Arm, the well-known manufacturer of advanced chips. According to what has been announced, SoftBank will invest 10 billion dollars already in April, with an additional 30 billion by December 2025. However, the second contribution will be bound to the OpenAI Transformation into a for-profit company, a change that will have to win approval not only from Microsoft, already a partner of OpenAI with about $13 billion in past funding, but also from the attorney general of California, where the company is headquartered. If the transformation should fail, SoftBank will reduce the amount total of the investment to 20 billion dollars.
Furthermore, a quarter of the investment, equal to 10 billion, will be co-financed by other investors, whose names were not disclosed. According to Reuters, ecosystem could join a consortium that also includes the funds coat Management, Altimeter City’s e Thrive Capital.
OpenAi's Next Steps
With this new injection of capital, OpenAI aims to intensify its research onartificial intelligence, expand its computational capacity and improve its tools to meet growing user demand. ChatGPT, that It now has 500 million weekly users, has seen a 100 million increase in just four weeks, exponentially increasing the need for computing power, making it imperative to scale up infrastructure. Additionally, OpenAI is collaborating with Softbank e Oracle infrastructures to develop a network of data centers within the project Stargate, a $500 billion initiative designed to support AI workloads in the United States.
ChatGpt, what's new in 2025: images and controversies
2025 has started with great new for OpenAI. The possibility of create and edit images via the ChatGPT dashboard has generated a huge amount of excitement. The comic-book-style images, inspired by Studio Ghibli, have gone viral on social media, demonstrating the enormous creative potential of AI technology.
However, this feature has raised some disputes Legal, in particular with regard to the Copyright. Many artists and creators have accused OpenAI of using copyrighted works without permission to train its models. In March 2025, a federal judge decided not to dismiss a cause brought by the New York Times, which accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of using its articles without authorization to train AI models. This case could have major repercussions on the future of the company.
