OpenAI in talks to raise funding that would value AI startup at up to $340 billion

OpenAI is successful talks to rise up to $40 cardinal successful a backing circular that would assistance the artificial quality company's valuation to arsenic precocious arsenic $340 billion, CNBC has confirmed.

Masayoshi Son's SoftBank would pb the round, contributing betwixt $15 cardinal and 25 billion, according to 2 radical acquainted with the negotiations who asked not to beryllium named due to the fact that the talks are ongoing. SoftBank would surpass Microsoft arsenic OpenAI's apical backer.

The Wall Street Journal was archetypal to study connected the talks.

Part of the backing whitethorn beryllium utilized for OpenAI's committedness to Stargate, a associated task betwixt SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle that was introduced by President Donald Trump last week, the sources said. The program calls for billions of dollars to beryllium invested successful U.S. AI infrastructure.

OpenAI was past valued astatine $157 cardinal valuation by backstage investors. In precocious 2022, the institution launched its ChatGPT chatbot and kicked disconnected the roar successful generative AI. OpenAI closed its latest $6.6 cardinal circular successful October, gearing up to aggressively vie with Elon Musk's xAI arsenic good arsenic Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Anthropic.

Meanwhile, Chinese startup laboratory DeepSeek is blowing up successful the U.S, presenting caller contention to OpenAI. DeepSeek saw its app soar to the apical of Apple's App Store rankings this week and roiled U.S. markets connected reports that its almighty exemplary was trained astatine a fraction of the outgo of U.S. competitors.

At an lawsuit successful Washington, D.C., connected Thursday hosted by OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman said DeepSeek is "clearly a large model."

"This is simply a reminder of the level of contention and the request for antiauthoritarian Al to win," helium said. He said it besides points to the "level of involvement successful reasoning, the level of involvement successful unfastened source."

WATCH: OpenAI successful talks to rise up to $40 cardinal successful backing round