OpenAI raises $6.6 billion at a $157 billion valuation

OpenAI closed a $6.6 billion funding round at a $157 billion post-money valuation, reported at the time as the largest venture capital round on record. Thrive Capital led with roughly $1.3 billion and secured an option to invest up to $1 billion more through 2025; Microsoft, Nvidia and SoftBank each put in substantial sums, alongside Khosla Ventures, Altimeter Capital, Fidelity and MGX. The round brought OpenAI’s total capital raised to roughly $17.9 billion.

Two conditions attached to the round drew particular attention. Investors could claw back their money if OpenAI did not complete its previously reported conversion from non-profit to for-profit control within two years — tying the round’s viability directly to a corporate restructuring that had not yet happened and would, in the event, take longer than that window to complete. The Financial Times also reported that OpenAI had asked some investors to commit to not backing competing frontier labs, specifically naming Anthropic and xAI, an unusual restriction for a venture round and one that drew comparisons to exclusivity terms more typical of strategic corporate investment than of financial investors.

The valuation came against reported financials showing OpenAI’s revenue growing quickly but still far outpaced by spending: annualised revenue above $3 billion against roughly $7 billion already spent on model training and $1.5 billion on staffing, with ChatGPT’s operating costs alone reported at roughly $700,000 a day. The round funded a company whose burn rate, cash needs for the compute build-out ahead, and unresolved corporate structure had all become live questions simultaneously — a combination that made the record valuation itself a subject of debate rather than a straightforward endorsement.