AI race: OpenAI raises $110 billion, valuation soars to $730 billion

has secured a massive $110 billion funding round, valuing the ChatGPT maker at $730 billion, as the artificial intelligence company accelerates investments to meet rapidly expanding global demand for AI services.

The investment -- among the largest fundraising rounds in Silicon Valley history - includes $30 billion each from Japanese conglomerate SoftBank and chipmaker Nvidia, along with $50 billion from

. Additional investors are expected to join as the round progresses, according to a summary by AFP.

Alongside the funding, OpenAI also unveiled strategic partnerships with Amazon through its cloud arm AWS and with Nvidia, whose advanced chips remain central to large-scale AI training and deployment.

“SoftBank, NVIDIA, and Amazon are long-term partners who share our ambition to turn real scientific progress into systems that deliver meaningful benefits for people at global scale,” OpenAI said in a statement.

The Amazon investment will begin with an initial $15 billion infusion, followed by another $35 billion in the coming months subject to certain conditions, the companies said.

The scale of the funding highlights the enormous capital requirements of building and operating advanced artificial intelligence systems, particularly the rising costs associated with computing infrastructure.

At the same time, investors continue to debate whether AI companies can generate sufficient long-term revenue to offset these spending demands.

OpenAI pointed to strong user growth metrics to demonstrate accelerating adoption. ChatGPT now has more than 900 million weekly active users and over 50 million paying consumer subscribers, with January and February on track to become the platform’s biggest months for recent subscriptions.

The company added that more than nine million businesses currently pay to use ChatGPT for workplace applications, while weekly users of its Codex software development tool have more than tripled since the start of the year to 1.6 million.

The disclosure of usage figures appears aimed at reassuring investors amid scrutiny over the economics of large-scale AI development.

The funding announcement comes as competition intensifies in the AI sector, with rival Anthropic -- founded by former OpenAI employees --gaining attention for its Claude models, while Google’s Gemini has also emerged as a strong challenger in the rapidly evolving market.