OpenAI is in discussions to raise as much as $100 billion in a funding round that could value the company at up to $830 billion, according to a Wall Street Journal report citing people familiar with the matter. The company is targeting completion of the round by the end of the first calendar quarter next year and may seek backing from sovereign wealth funds.
The Information earlier reported on the potential fundraise, though it estimated a lower valuation of around $750 billion. If completed at the higher figure, the deal would rank among the largest private capital raises ever and significantly expand OpenAI’s balance sheet.
The talks come as OpenAI commits to massive spending on infrastructure and global partnerships to maintain its lead in artificial intelligence. The company has been investing heavily in model training and inference, with costs increasingly covered by cash rather than cloud credits. This shift suggests that compute expenses have outgrown what existing partnerships can fully offset.
OpenAI is also moving faster to release new models and expand its developer tools as competition intensifies from rivals such as Anthropic and Google. These efforts require sustained capital to support research, product launches, and the scaling of enterprise services tied to ChatGPT and related APIs.
Market Conditions and Strategic Options
The potential fundraise is unfolding against a more cautious investment backdrop. Broader sentiment around AI has cooled as investors question whether debt fueled spending by major technology companies can be sustained. Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, and OpenAI have all committed tens of billions of dollars to AI infrastructure, raising concerns about long-term returns.
Supply constraints add another challenge. Shortages in advanced memory chips are limiting the pace of data center expansion and could affect the broader technology sector. These bottlenecks increase costs and complicate deployment timelines for AI developers that rely on high performance hardware.
OpenAI has also been rumored to be exploring an IPO as a longer-term path to raising tens of billions of dollars. The company is reported to be generating annualized revenue of about $20 billion, driven by subscriptions, enterprise contracts, and API usage. An IPO could provide liquidity and a more permanent source of capital, though no formal plans have been confirmed.
Separately, industry speculation has pointed to discussions with Amazon over a potential $10 billion investment. Such a deal could include access to Amazon’s in-house AI computing chips, offering OpenAI another option to manage rising infrastructure costs.
According to PitchBook data, OpenAI currently holds more than $64 billion in capital and was most recently valued at roughly $500 billion in a secondary transaction. A successful $100 billion raise would further strengthen its position but also underscore how capital intensive the AI race has become.
