OpenAI’s gigantic new funding round renews fears about the company’s profitability and cash burn

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy.

This week, I’m focusing on OpenAI’s gigantic new funding round and valuation. I also look at a recent leak around Anthropic’s models, and at backlash to ads placed in GitHub Copilot.

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OpenAI closes $122 billion funding round at $852 billion valuation

OpenAI has closed what may be the largest private funding round ever, raising $122 billion (well more than the $110 billion target it announced in February.) The company is now valued at $852 billion, making it more valuable than most publicly traded companies.

Investors include some of the biggest (and richest) names in big tech and big finance. Amazon reportedly committed around $50 billion, Nvidia put in $30 billion, and SoftBank contributed roughly $30 billion. Andreessen Horowitz, D.E. Shaw Ventures, TPG, T. Rowe Price, and Abu Dhabi’s MGX also participated, along with Microsoft and other existing backers.

The AI company is clearly laying the groundwork for a 2026 IPO, and it may come sooner rather than later, depending on market conditions. Currently, about a third of the total value of the stock market is being buoyed up by faith that the AI models and agents will transform the way business operates.

OpenAI says it’s now generating about $2 billion per month in revenue, mostly from ChatGPT subscriptions, enterprise contracts, and API usage. (OpenAI was quick to point out that 40% of its revenue comes from enterprise sales, hoping to dispel the narrative that rival Anthropic is capturing the enterprise market.) Still, the company remains unprofitable, burning through cash on computing power, data centers, chips, and talent. OpenAI will use the additional funding to continue scaling up its models so that they can support the advanced agentic systems that are capable of autonomously handling challenging business tasks.