Yesterday Openai gave colossal news. With the title “New financing to develop the AGI” announced that it has completed a new round of financing. Not only new: it is the largest in history for any private company. The figures here are more dizzy than ever, and they talk to us again of extraordinary expectations. We keep waiting for everything from AI, and OpenAi is taking advantage of it very well.
Historical Financing Round. Never in history a private company had raised a similar financing round. Openai has raised 40,000 million dollars, an absolutely colossal figure. In October 2024 they already built 6,600 million dollarswho joined the “multimillionaire investment“Microsoft made in January 2023, and which is estimated was 10,000 million dollars. The Redmond company already He had invested 1,000 million dollars in 2019 and other 2,000 million In 2021.
But they have to become ‘for-profit’. OpenAI will receive 10,000 million dollars immediately. Of these, 7,500 million dollars will come from SoftBank, while the other 2.5 billion will arrive from an “investor union.” The remaining 30,000 million will arrive at the end of the year, they indicate In CNBCbut only if the company manages to do the Transition to a company ‘For-Profit’that is, a company with profit. If they fail they will lose a quarter of the investment round. Of the total round, about 18,000 million dollars will be dedicated To the Stargate project.
They are worth as much as Coca-Cola. The financing round causes the “post-money” assessment (after the round) of OpenAI to rise to 300,000 million dollars. It is already as much as Coca-ColaNovo Nordisk, Chevron or LVMH and more than Asml Samsung or Nestlé. Only Spacex (350,000 million dollars) is worth more in the private companies sector, and with this OpenAi round it is put to the Tiktok level According to CB Insights.
500 million in love with chatgpt. In the Openai announcement he indicated how they currently have 500 million weekly chatgpt users, a really remarkable figure that makes it clear that the growth of users continues to be produced at a remarkable pace: a month ago the figure was 400 million users.
The Ghibli phenomenon shows. The chatgpt phenomenon made Openai take only two months to reach 100 million users (Instagram took 26). Yesterday Sam Altman indicated how in the last five days they had grown up in one million users, but after The phenomenon of the Studio Ghibli style images They grew up in a million users … in just an hour.
But AI still does not be profitable. The financing round responds to that almost blind bet in the potential of the AI, but the current reality is clear: this technology is not profitable. The companies are burning money as if there were no tomorrow To develop it, but its training and operational cost is huge. Openai herself estimates that It will not be profitable until 2029and until then it will continue to lose more and more money without stopping. In Openai, yes, they expect income They triple In 2025 to 12.7 billion dollars, but they will continue to lose money.
Gasoline for the AGI? Openai’s ultimate goal is to develop a General Artificial Intelligence (AGI) that overcomes human intelligence in all areas. The problem is that it is not clear that neither they nor anyone succeeded, but precisely that is about this bet: that it will be OpenAi to achieve it. To do so, the impact at the social and economic level is potentially the greatest in the history of humanity, but once again, we insist: here everything is unknowns, and the AGI could take years or decades to arrive … if it arrives one day.
SoftBank, Openai’s new girlfriend. The other remarkable element of this investment round is the final turning point that occurs in the OpenAI alliances structure. Since 2019 his great ally was Microsoft, but That non-dilio was seen the seams months ago. The relationship between both companies is now much weaker, and each one It takes time preparing a “cordial farewell”. Microsoft has participated in this round, they claim in CNBC, but has done it with a totally secondary role. SoftBank, meanwhile, becomes the great OpenAi patron and trusts a good part of its future to the success of Altman’s company.
Image | Nibor With Midjourney
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