OpenAI just raised $6.6 billion to build ever-larger AI models

OpenAI just closed a historic funding round, taking in a $6.6 billion investment at a $157 billion valuation, to continue pursuing its mission to build artificial-general intelligence according to a company blog post.

The funding round was led by Thrive Capital, which committed $1 billion, according to the Financial Times. It was also reported that Thrive got a special deal (not offered to other investors) that allows it to invest another $1 billion next year at the same valuation if the AI firm hits a revenue goal, Reuters reported.

These funds are apparently contingent on OpenAI going through with a rumored restructure as a for-profit company. The company's for-profit wing is currently overseen by a nonprofit research body, and investor profits are capped at 100x. If OpenAI doesn't restructure itself as a for-profit company within two years, Axios reported, investors can ask for their money back. Last week, Reuters reported that the company is considering becoming a public benefit corporation (like Anthropic).

In a rare move, OpenAI also asked investors to avoid backing rival start-ups such as Anthropic and Elon Musk's xAI, the Financial Times reported. It's worth noting that OpenAI's latest funding round just barely surpasses xAI, which raised $6 billion in May.

This funding round values OpenAI at roughly 40 times its reported revenue, an unprecedented figure that highlights just how much hype surrounds AI in Silicon Valley. The New York Times reported that OpenAI's monthly revenue hit $300 million in August, and the company expects about $3.7 billion in annual sales this year (and estimates that its revenue will reach $11.6 billion next year.)

These billions will go toward the incredibly expensive task of training AI frontier models. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said AI models that cost $1 billion to train are in development and $100 billion models are not far behind. For OpenAI, which wants to build a series of "reasoning" models, those costs are only expected to balloon - making fresh funding rounds like this one critical.