The round will be led by SoftBank, which plans to invest between $15 billion and $25 billion, making it the largest investor in Sam Altman's firm. Similar information was previously reported by the Financial Times.
Part of the funds may be allocated to the Stargate project — a joint venture between SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle announced by Donald Trump, which aims to invest $500 billion in U.S. AI infrastructure over four years.
In early October, OpenAI closed another funding round with a valuation of $157 billion. The startup is spending billions on training and supporting AI models while remaining unprofitable.
The recent release of the allegedly inexpensive and efficient R1 neural network by the Chinese company DeepSeek has raised questions about the viability of billion-dollar investments in AI.
However, DeepSeek has been suspected of stealing data from OpenAI. The American startup and Microsoft have initiated an investigation.
OpenAI's product director, Kevin Weil, emphasized that the more computations are applied, the more intelligent the neural network becomes. He promised to soon introduce a new model that will significantly outperform existing market products.
Previously, Altman referred to DeepSeek-R1 as "impressive" and vowed to surpass it.
Recall that in January, his startup introduced its own AI agent called "Operator," capable of performing online tasks on behalf of users.
