OpenAI in talks for up to $100 billion funding round

OpenAI is in talks to raise up to $100 billion in a funding round that could value the company at up to $830 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. If completed on those terms, it would be the largest venture capital round ever attempted.

The figure illustrates the change in scale of generative artificial intelligence. ChatGPT turned OpenAI into a mass-market company, but maintaining and improving its models requires industrial-scale infrastructure: chips, data centers, power and the capacity to handle millions of queries. The company now needs funding on a scale comparable to major infrastructure projects, not a conventional startup.

A valuation far above the latest benchmark

The deal is reportedly being prepared for before the end of the first quarter of 2026 and could include sovereign wealth funds, according to the U.S. newspaper. The Information had previously reported that OpenAI was exploring a fundraise at a $750 billion valuation.

The latest known benchmark placed the company at around $500 billion, based on a secondary transaction. A secondary transaction allows existing shareholders to sell their stakes; it does not necessarily mean new money is entering the company. That is why a primary round of up to $100 billion would have a much more direct impact on its ability to finance operations and expansion.

PitchBook estimates that OpenAI has more than $64 billion in cash. Even so, the size of the round shows that this reserve is not enough for the growth plan taking shape around large language models.

The cost goes beyond training the next model

Training an advanced model attracts much of the attention, but ongoing spending rises most sharply when users put it to work. Inference is the process by which a trained model generates a response, writes code, analyzes a file or processes an image. Each of those requests consumes computing capacity.

OpenAI’s agreements with cloud providers have given it access to infrastructure, including computing credits. However, usage appears to have surpassed what those arrangements can cover on their own. The new capital would also help pay for that inference in cash and secure computing capacity over the long term.

The company has infrastructure and computing investment commitments running into the trillions of dollars. In that context, a $100 billion round would not by itself cover the entire future bill, but it would strengthen OpenAI’s position to negotiate for chips, power and data centers in a fiercely contested market.

More revenue, but a more expensive race

OpenAI is reportedly generating annualized revenue of nearly $20 billion. That is an exceptional figure for such a young AI company, although it falls well short of automatically offsetting the cost of running compute-intensive services and funding the next generation of models.

The talks come as Google accelerates with Gemini and Anthropic gains ground among businesses and developers. Competition is no longer limited to chatbot quality: it also covers developer tools, task-performing agents, enterprise products and access to the infrastructure that makes them possible.

There have also been reports of a possible OpenAI IPO and a $10 billion investment from Amazon that would give the company access to its AI chips. Neither possibility would replace the round under discussion: a public offering would take time, and a partnership with a specific provider would not eliminate the need for liquidity and diversified capacity.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. Until investors are committed and final terms are set, the $100 billion and $830 billion valuation remain negotiating targets, not a completed deal. But the size of the proposal already sends a clear signal: the race for advanced AI is pushing technology financing to a scale associated with the world’s largest companies.