OpenAI Closes In on $100 Billion Mega-Round at $850 Billion Valuation

TL;DR

OpenAI is finalizing the first phase of a new funding round expected to exceed $100 billion, the largest private tech deal in history
Amazon is in talks to invest up to $50 billion, SoftBank $30 billion, Nvidia up to $30 billion, and Microsoft is also participating
The deal values OpenAI at over $850 billion, nearly triple its $300 billion valuation from March 2025
Funding will arrive in installments through 2026, with a second phase targeting sovereign wealth funds and VCs later this year
OpenAI is prepping for a potential Q4 2026 IPO and projects $14 billion in losses this year

Less than a year after it closed a $40 billion SoftBank-led round that was itself the largest private tech raise in history, OpenAI is about to shatter its own record. According to Bloomberg, the ChatGPT maker is finalizing first-phase commitments for a funding round that will bring in more than $100 billion at a valuation exceeding $850 billion.

The numbers are so large they have started to lose meaning. But the investor list tells you everything about what this deal actually is: not a bet on a chatbot, but a race to lock down the physical infrastructure that will underpin the next decade of computing.

The Money

Investor	Reported Commitment	Strategic Angle
Amazon	Up to $50B	OpenAI expands onto AWS, uses Amazon custom chips
SoftBank	$30B	Three $10B installments, extends existing relationship
Nvidia	Up to $30B	Much of the capital flows right back to buy Nvidia GPUs
Microsoft	Low billions	Longstanding backer, Azure integration continues

Backers are expected to settle their allocations by the end of February. A second phase will target venture capital firms, sovereign wealth funds from the Middle East, and other institutional investors later this year, which could push total proceeds well beyond the initial $100 billion mark.

The pre-money valuation sits at $730 billion. Including the new capital, the post-money figure exceeds $850 billion, higher than the $830 billion initially expected. To put that in context: OpenAI was valued at $157 billion in October 2024, $300 billion in March 2025, and roughly $500 billion in a secondary sale last fall. The valuation has more than doubled in under a year.

The Nvidia Paradox

One detail deserves its own paragraph. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang clarified in early February that his company's widely reported $100 billion commitment to OpenAI "was never a commitment" and that Nvidia would "invest one step at a time." The current figure is closer to $30 billion, but the circularity is worth noting: much of the capital OpenAI raises from Nvidia will be spent buying Nvidia chips. Huang knows this. "We will invest a great deal of money," he said. "I believe in OpenAI. They're one of the most consequential companies of our time."

That is not philanthropy. That is demand generation with extra steps.

Who Benefits

Amazon

The headline number is $50 billion, but the real play is distribution. As part of the deal, OpenAI is expected to expand its usage of Amazon's chips and cloud services. Amazon gets to diversify beyond its own Bedrock platform while ensuring that OpenAI's inference workloads run partly on AWS. For a company that watched Microsoft gain the early cloud-AI advantage through its existing OpenAI partnership, this is a chance to claw back ground.

SoftBank

Masayoshi Son led the previous $40 billion round and is doubling down with $30 billion more, structured as three $10 billion installments. SoftBank's Vision Fund era was defined by overpaying for growth companies that never grew into their valuations. OpenAI - with 800 million weekly active users and $13 billion in 2025 revenue - is the company SoftBank has been waiting for to rehabilitate that track record.

The IPO Pipeline

OpenAI is reportedly in informal talks with Wall Street banks about a Q4 2026 IPO. The company recently hired a new chief accounting officer and a business finance officer to oversee investor relations. Executives are reportedly concerned about Anthropic listing first, which could dampen demand for OpenAI shares. The funding structure - preferred shares converting to common stock upon IPO - confirms that going public is not a question of if, but when.

Who Pays

OpenAI Itself

Internal documents forecast $14 billion in losses for 2026 and cumulative negative free cash flow of approximately $143 billion between 2024 and 2029, according to Deutsche Bank estimates. OpenAI has said it does not expect to turn a profit until 2030. It projects revenues will hit Nvidia-like levels of $100 billion annually by 2029, but that is four years of burning cash at an unprecedented rate. Revenue in 2025 was $13 billion, growing fast - but not yet fast enough to close the gap with spending plans that OpenAI itself has described as "multi-trillion dollar" infrastructure investments.

Existing Shareholders

Every mega-round dilutes the people who came before. Early investors and employees who bought or were granted equity at the $157 billion or $300 billion valuations are still sitting on enormous gains, but the conversion to a for-profit structure and the sheer volume of new capital entering means the cap table is getting crowded. The warrant giving OpenAI the right to acquire up to 160 million AMD shares (from a separate $6 billion GPU deal) adds another layer of complexity.

The Market

This round is happening against the backdrop of an AI funding frenzy that shows no signs of slowing. Anthropic closed a $30 billion Series G at $380 billion just days earlier. Nearly 20 US-based AI companies have raised mega-rounds of $100 million or more in the first two months of 2026 alone. Runway pulled in $315 million. World Labs raised $1 billion. The question is no longer whether the money is there. It is whether the returns will be.

The Competitive Picture

The irony of this record-breaking round is that it comes at a moment when OpenAI's technical lead is narrower than it has ever been. Rankings from the Chatbot Arena show GPT models facing stiff competition from Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, and a growing roster of open-source alternatives. One internal assessment reportedly placed ChatGPT 5.1 at 11th in current LLM rankings, with competitors "firmly overtaking it."

OpenAI's response is to spend its way to dominance at the infrastructure layer. If you cannot guarantee the best model every quarter, you can guarantee the most compute, the widest distribution, and the deepest integration with the platforms that enterprise customers already use. That is what $100 billion buys.

What Happens Next

The second phase of fundraising will target sovereign wealth funds and institutional investors. If it mirrors the first phase's momentum, the total raise could push significantly beyond $100 billion. Meanwhile, the IPO clock is ticking: OpenAI wants to go public before the window closes and before Anthropic gets there first.

The largest private funding round in history is not really about money. It is about physics - the physics of data centers, power grids, and chip supply chains. OpenAI is betting that whoever controls the most compute wins, even if winning means losing $14 billion this year. The investors lining up seem to agree. Whether the math works out is a question for 2030.

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