Reported by CNBC, Softbank would be leading the round, investing between $15-25 billion. This would make Softbank OpenAI’s top investor, overtaking Microsoft, and would also break the record for the largest single funding round for a private company. OpenAI was most recently valued at $157 billion in October 2024, after the close of its last funding round of $6.6 billion.

It is thought that some of the new funding would contribute to OpenAI’s involvement in Stargate (the collaboration with SoftBank and Oracle, unveiled last week by US President Donald Trump). This initiative outlines a multibillion-dollar investment in American AI infrastructure.

The news of this new round of fundraising comes as Chinese startup DeepSeek has launched its latest model, becoming one of OpenAI’s top competitors in the market. DeepSeek’s app flew to the top of Apple’s App Store ranking in the UK, USA, and China, completely surpassing OpenAI and other competitors.

Earlier this month, DeepSeek launched DeepSeek-R1, claiming that it delivers "performance on par with" OpenAI's latest ChatGPT models for tasks like coding and natural language reasoning. The app runs on the open-source DeepSeek-V3 model, which developers claim was built for less than $6 million – a fraction of the billions that has been invested into its rivals, like OpenAI.

At an event in Washington D.C. this week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman commented on Deepseek: “[It is] clearly a great model … This is a reminder of the level of competition and the need for democratic Al to win.”

It will be interesting to see how OpenAI allocates this funding, as well as its future plans to continue to rival competitors such as DeepSeek.

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