Valuation surpasses $850 billion! OpenAI's first-ever personal investment, weekly activity approaching $1 billion

Questioning AI · Will the initial opening up of personal investment promote the democratization of AI venture capital?

OpenAI has completed a financing round of $122 billion, and its post-investment valuation has risen to $852 billion. In addition, ChatGPT’s weekly active users have exceeded 900 million, subscription users are over 50 million, and OpenAI’s monthly revenue has reached $2 billion.

On Tuesday, OpenAI announced that it has completed a round of record-breaking financing, with its post-investment valuation reaching $852 billion.

The total amount of this round of financing is $122 billion, higher than the $110 billion commitment capital disclosed earlier in February. It was led by SoftBank Group(9984.T), together with strategic investors including Amazon(AMZN.O), NVIDIA(NVDA.O), Microsoft(MSFT.O), and others, as well as institutions including Andreessen Horowitz and D. E. Shaw Ventures.

The company also disclosed that an additional roughly $12 billion came from a broader pool of investors, including about $3 billion raised through bank channels that were opened to individual investors. This is the first time in OpenAI’s history that it has raised funds from individual investors through the banking system.

In addition, the company has expanded its revolving credit facility to about $4.7 billion.

Financing will drive the “infrastructure layer” build-out

In its statement, OpenAI said that this round of financing will be used to build an AI infrastructure layer to support its expansion of capabilities globally. The company said: “AI is driving productivity improvements, accelerating scientific discovery, and expanding the boundaries of creativity for individuals and organizations. This funding enables us to continue to stay ahead at the scale we need in the present.”

OpenAI further noted that it is gradually becoming a core AI infrastructure platform, serving consumers, enterprises, and developers. The company views user adoption, enterprise deployment, the developer ecosystem, and compute capabilities as a “flywheel,” continuously converting technological capabilities into economic value.

Rapid growth in users and revenue

Since launching ChatGPT in 2022, OpenAI has expanded rapidly and become one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the world. As of now, ChatGPT’s weekly active users have exceeded 900 million, and subscription users exceed 50 million. The company expects to “soon” surpass the 1 billion weekly user threshold.

Business data also shows a trend of high-speed growth. OpenAI’s current monthly revenue has reached $2 billion, while its revenue for last year’s full year was $13.1 billion. By comparison, by the end of 2024, the company’s revenue level is about $1 billion per quarter.

The company disclosed that its application programming interface currently processes 15 billion tokens per minute, and that user search usage has nearly tripled within a year. The programming agent Codex has more than 2 million weekly users, with usage up 70% quarter-over-quarter. Enterprise customers currently contribute more than 40% of revenue.

In addition, a pilot program monetizing the free version of ChatGPT through advertising has already generated more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue within less than six weeks.

Profitability and cost pressures behind high growth

Despite rapid revenue growth, OpenAI is still loss-making and continues to burn cash.

As its valuation has increased significantly, CEO Sam Altman faces greater pressure to prove the validity of its business model and valuation—especially on the eve of a potential initial public offering (IPO).

The company has recently taken steps to control costs, including scaling back some high-investment projects and shutting down certain products. The AI video generation tool Sora, which had been launched earlier, has been put on hold, and it is reported that the product is losing about $1 million per day.

Meanwhile, Altman had previously issued a “red alert” to employees in December last year, warning that subscription growth could slow, competition in the market may intensify, and high levels of compute spending will place pressure on the company in the future.

Open investment channels to promote “revenue sharing”

In terms of equity structure, OpenAI said it will open its holdings to ETFs managed by Ark Invest to expand the range of investor participation. Ark Invest founder Cathie Wood said this move will promote the democratization of venture capital. The ARK Innovation ETF(ARKK.N), ARK Next Generation Internet ETF(ARKW.N), and ARK Blockchain & Fintech Innovation ETF(ARKF.N) will collectively hold about 3% of OpenAI’s shares.

At the same time, the market has also seen fluctuations in investment vehicles for unlisted AI companies. Fundrise’s innovation fund(VCX.N) saw its stock price surge sharply after listing, but then quickly fell back, reflecting the market’s expectations regarding the volatility of high-valuation tech assets.

Advancing the “unified super app” strategy

On the product front, OpenAI is advancing the “unified AI super app” strategy. The company plans to integrate ChatGPT, Codex, browsing functionality, and broader agent capabilities to build a system that can understand user intent and execute across tasks.

OpenAI said that a unified product interface will improve development efficiency and system consistency. This direction contrasts with the earlier strategy of rolling out multiple independent products separately.

Meanwhile, competition in the industry is intensifying. Led by Elon Musk, xAI is pushing for deep integration between its chatbot Grok and the social platform X to build a “universal app.” Reports also indicate that OpenAI is exploring social product directions and has invited former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to participate in discussions related to these projects.