OpenAI announced on March 31 that it had closed one of the largest private funding rounds in history.

In a blog post on the company’s website, OpenAI revealed it had raised US$40 billion in a round that values the company at US$300 billion post-money.

According to CNBC, the financing was led by SoftBank, with participation from Microsoft, Coatue, Altimeter, and Thrive, all of whom are existing backers.

“[This new capital] enables us to push the frontiers of AI research even further, scale our compute infrastructure, and deliver increasingly powerful tools for the 500 million people who use ChatGPT every week,”

OpenAI wrote in the blog post.

“We’re excited to be working in partnership with SoftBank Group — few companies understand how to scale transformative technology like they do.”

CNBC, citing a source familiar with the matter, reported that approximately US$18 billion of the funding will be allocated to OpenAI’s ambitious Stargate infrastructure project, which aims to establish a network of AI data centres across the US.

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