OpenAI just pulled off the largest private tech funding deal in history—a jaw-dropping $40 billion raise that values the company at $300 billion.
That’s right: The maker of ChatGPT is suddenly sitting on a war chest bigger than any other AI startup on Earth (and in the same valuation league as some of the most valuable private companies worldwide).
But that’s only the start of this story.
The real question is:
What does OpenAI plan to do with all that money?
To get some answers, I turned to Marketing AI Institute founder and CEO Paul Roetzer on Episode 143 of The Artificial Intelligence Show. He offered an inside look at how OpenAI might deploy its new billions, and what it all means for AI’s near-term future.
OpenAI’s $40 billion round marks a massive vote of confidence from investors, led in large part by SoftBank. One catch? The deal reportedly carries a clause that lets SoftBank cut its investment in half if OpenAI doesn’t convert fully to a for-profit structure by the end of the year. Translation: The company needs to finalize its complicated for-profit transition fast, or risk losing half of those billions.
That’s easier said than done, given OpenAI’s unusual structure. The organization started as a nonprofit research lab and now has a nonprofit “parent” that caps the returns of its for-profit arm. But with so much money on the table, you can bet they’ll figure it out, and soon.
Wherever you look, OpenAI is smashing growth records:
Those numbers translate into at least $5 billion in annualized ChatGPT revenue, separate from what OpenAI also makes from API sales of its AI models. Put it all together, and the company projects it could triple last year’s revenue, topping $12.7 billion this year.
“The growth is nuts,” says Roetzer.
So, what will OpenAI do with all these billions?
Part of the money will fund Stargate, a mega-partnership with Oracle and SoftBank to build out AI data centers across the United States. These data centers provide the computing power to train and run OpenAI’s giant models, and they’re immensely expensive. OpenAI expects its cash burn to soar to at least $7 billion this year, with plenty more to come over the next few years. It’s the definition of going big or going home.
Why burn so much capital so quickly? Because OpenAI’s North Star, as Roetzer notes, isn’t just better chatbots. It’s AGI, or artificial general intelligence. Think AI that can reason, plan, and solve problems much like a human, but with superhuman speed.
“They are definitely betting on the fact that when they build all these data centers, they are going to follow scaling laws and have an insanely valuable tool,” Roetzer explains, referencing the idea that more compute plus larger models equals dramatically more capable AI systems.
If they’re right, the payoff could be beyond anything we’ve ever seen.
All this talk of AGI isn’t just marketing spin. OpenAI has even teased the prospect of selling AI “agents” that could replace entire teams—or entire companies. That’s not science fiction, says Roetzer:
“That is absolutely what they are thinking is going to happen,” he says. “They think their system is basically going to do the work of an entire organization with a couple people orchestrating maybe millions of agents or an AI that orchestrates all the other AIs and the human oversees the master AI.”
At the moment, OpenAI is already trialing pricey enterprise plans, pro tiers, and advanced AI services that cost a lot more than your standard monthly chatbot subscription. And that might just be the tip of the iceberg. If OpenAI’s future models can truly handle knowledge work at scale, there’s practically no upper limit on what businesses might pay.
“I’m honestly not sure what the ceiling is on what you could charge for powerful AI or AGI, whatever we want to call it,” says Roetzer.
There’s no doubt the company is in hypergrowth mode. With 500 million weekly active users, 20 million paying subscribers, and billions in new funding, OpenAI shows no signs of slowing down—and plenty of signs of accelerating.
But it also faces huge challenges:
Despite all these hurdles, OpenAI’s leadership is publicly bullish that true “powerful AI” could be just a few model generations away. And if they’re right, we might see entire industries disrupted in a fraction of the time we once thought possible.
“There are a lot of people who are still trying to process what ChatGPT can do today,” says Roetzer. “But the people who are on the frontier are so far beyond that. And they are seeing a clear path to a very different world like two or three years from now.”
OpenAI’s unprecedented $40 billion raise and relentless product expansion highlight just how quickly AI is moving. In a matter of months after its release in late 2022, ChatGPT went from a novelty to an essential business tool, and now, just a few years later, the company behind it is one of the most valuable private tech firms on the planet.
The implications for businesses, marketers, and everyday users are massive—and they’re coming faster than anyone expected. OpenAI has the funding, the ambition, and the technology to reshape not just how we use AI, but how we work and live.
Strap in. Because the race for more powerful AI is moving at warp speed—and OpenAI just stepped on the gas. As Roetzer reminds us:
“The people who are closest to this stuff are talking about what seems like some pretty crazy numbers, but to them it just sort of seems inevitable.”