SoftBank leads a $40 billion round at a $300 billion valuation

OpenAI closed a $40 billion funding round valuing the company at $300 billion, the largest private financing ever recorded for a technology company — nearly three times the previous record, according to PitchBook data cited in coverage of the deal. SoftBank led the round with $30 billion, joined by a syndicate including existing investor Microsoft, Coatue, Altimeter and Thrive Capital contributing the remaining $10 billion. The valuation was almost double the $157 billion OpenAI had been assigned in an October 2024 round, and put the company behind only SpaceX among the most valuable private companies tracked by CB Insights.

The round carried a condition tying its full size to OpenAI’s corporate restructuring. Only $10 billion was committed unconditionally; the remaining $30 billion from SoftBank would be reduced to $20 billion if OpenAI had not converted from its capped-profit structure to a for-profit public benefit corporation by the end of 2025 — a conversion that required sign-off from Microsoft and the California attorney general, and that Elon Musk was separately challenging in court. OpenAI completed the restructuring in September 2025, ahead of the deadline.

OpenAI said the capital would fund continued research and a large expansion of computing infrastructure, including its Stargate data-centre project, and pointed to a user base that had reached 500 million weekly ChatGPT users as evidence of demand. The deal set a valuation baseline that a further secondary share sale later in 2025 pushed close to $500 billion, and it made the restructuring — rather than any product milestone — the condition that most directly determined how much capital OpenAI would actually receive.