OpenAI completed US$122 billion in financing, with a valuation of US$852 billion, and opened subscription to retail investors for the first time

# Bao Yilong

Source: Wall Street CN

This financing round is even larger than the biggest IPO in history. Another feature of this round is its opening to individual investors. According to OpenAI, the company sold approximately $3 billion worth of shares to individual investors for the first time through private placement channels at three major banks. Following the completion of the financing, expectations for an OpenAI IPO have intensified.

On Tuesday, OpenAI announced the completion of a record-breaking financing round, valuing the company at $852 billion, and opened up subscription access to retail investors for the first time.

On Tuesday, March 31, OpenAI announced the completion of its largest financing round to date, totaling $122 billion, with a post-money valuation of $852 billion.

The total amount includes the $110 billion financing disclosed by OpenAI this February. Sarah Friar, CFO of OpenAI, stated:

“This financing round is even larger than the largest IPO in history.”

She noted the deal was designed to give the company “tremendous flexibility” amid numerous uncertainties in the public markets, allowing it to invest in computing resources and its artificial intelligence roadmap.

Following the completion of the round, expectations for an OpenAI IPO have grown stronger. Friar said the company needs to build “public company capabilities” and views an IPO as an important milestone for building trust, but did not disclose specific details regarding the timeline for the initial public offering.

## Financing Structure: Led by Three Tech Giants, Individual Investors Admitted for the First Time

The financing round, months in the making, was mainly backed by three large technology companies.

As reported by Wall Street CN, Amazon.com agreed to invest $50 billion, while Nvidia and SoftBank Group each invested $30 billion.

Of the $50 billion pledged by Amazon, $35 billion is conditional, requiring OpenAI to complete an IPO or achieve the technical milestone of artificial general intelligence (AGI) by the end of 2028.

The $30 billion commitments from Nvidia and SoftBank will be disbursed in installments, with two tranches of $10 billion each to be paid on July 1 and October 1 of this year respectively.

Another notable feature of this round is its accessibility to individual investors. OpenAI stated that it sold roughly $3 billion worth of shares to individual investors for the first time via private channels at three major banks.

Sarah Friar noted that participation in such placements is currently limited mainly to high-net-worth retail investors, and expanding access to ordinary investors is one of her near-term priorities.

This also marks the first time in OpenAI’s history that individual capital has been introduced through banking channels. In addition, OpenAI shares will be included in several ETFs managed by ARK Invest, led by Cathie Wood, to broaden public investment access to the AI firm.

Approximately $7 billion was subscribed by a group of newly introduced institutional investors, including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), D.E. Shaw Ventures, Abu Dhabi sovereign fund MGX, TPG, T. Rowe Price, as well as existing shareholder Microsoft.

Other participating institutions included Altimeter, Appaloosa, BlackRock, Blackstone, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity, Temasek, among others.

In its statement, OpenAI also said it had expanded its existing revolving credit facility to approximately $4.7 billion, supported by a global syndicate including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Mizuho, Royal Bank of Canada, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, UBS, HSBC and Banco Santander. The credit line remains undrawn at present.

## Accelerating Revenue Growth, Corporate Clients Emerge as New Growth Engine

OpenAI also disclosed on a podcast that the company now generates $2 billion in monthly revenue, with full-year 2024 revenue reaching $13.1 billion.

The company said corporate clients now account for more than 40% of revenue, a share expected to rise to 50% by the end of the year. On the consumer side, ChatGPT currently has more than 900 million weekly active users and over 50 million paid subscribers.

OpenAI claimed that ChatGPT’s monthly web visits and mobile sessions are six times those of the second-ranked AI application, while total user time spent on the app is four times that of the second-place AI app and four times the combined total of all other AI applications.

OpenAI highlighted that search usage nearly tripled within a year, stating:

“Our advertising pilot program achieved over $100 million in annual recurring revenue in less than six weeks. These are not just growth milestones — they signal that frontier AI is becoming embedded in the daily lives of people around the world.”

## Streamlining Product Portfolio, Betting on the “Super App”

OpenAI has clearly identified the “AI super app” as its core product strategy for the next phase.

The company believes that as model capabilities continue to improve, the bottleneck limiting AI adoption has shifted from intelligence itself to usability. Users need a unified system that understands intent and executes tasks across applications, rather than multiple disjointed tools.

Accordingly, OpenAI plans to integrate ChatGPT, Codex, browsing capabilities and other agent functionalities into a single platform. The company said this strategy serves both product and distribution purposes:

A unified product interface will accelerate feature iteration, turning consumer-scale user adoption into an on-ramp for enterprise uptake, as daily usage habits naturally extend to workplace scenarios.

In OpenAI’s narrative, a single interface enables faster product improvements, more coordinated releases, and better capture of value from agent workflows.

The end result is a tightly integrated system: infrastructure delivers intelligence, intelligence powers agents, and the product deploys those agents globally.

## Rising IPO Expectations Amid Sustained Profit Pressure

With the conclusion of this financing round, market expectations for an OpenAI IPO continue to heat up.

Widely held expectations suggest the company could kick off the listing process as early as this year. Sarah Friar described an IPO as an expression of “good governance” and a “moment to build trust,” but gave no specific timeline.

Notably, Amazon’s $35 billion conditional commitment is directly tied to an IPO timeline, further strengthening internal pressure on OpenAI to pursue a public listing.

Analysts point out that the central test facing Sam Altman will be justifying an $852 billion valuation to public market investors while the company remains unprofitable.

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