OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is seeking to raise $40 billion in a fresh round of funding that would value the startup at a staggering $340 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
Japan’s SoftBank is leading the investment round and is in talks to invest $15-25 billion in the deal that would make it the ChatGPT-maker’s biggest financial backer.
The reports came after Chinese startup DeepSeek sparked panic this week with a powerful new chatbot developed at a fraction of the cost of its US competitors, dealing a blow to markets.
The Softbank investment was first reported by the Financial Times.
The investment plan comes just three months after OpenAI closed its previous funding round that valued the company at $157 billion.
Doubling its valuation would be unprecedented in Silicon Valley history and signals the vast sums needed to build world-leading AI models from scratch, much of it on cutting-edge computing and infrastructure.
SoftBank and OpenAI are part of the Stargate drive announced by US President Donald Trump to invest up to $500 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States.
