OpenAI Reportedly Ready to Close Record $40 Billion Funding Round

OpenAI is reportedly close to finalizing what would be the largest funding round of all time.

That $40 billion round is being led by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, with other venture capital groups in talks to participate, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday (March 26), citing sources familiar with the matter.

The funding round — the largest ever, per PitchBook data — would value OpenAI at $300 billion. That’s nearly twice the $157 valuation the company achieved with an October funding round.

One source told Bloomberg that OpenAI generated $3.7 billion in revenue last year, and expects sales to reach $29.4 billion next year. However, this person added that the company does not expect to be cash-flow positive until 2029, when revenues are projected to exceed $125 billion.

As PYMNTS has reported, some of the funds raised in this round will go toward the $18 billion OpenAI has pledged to the Stargate artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure project, a half-trillion dollar venture aimed at developing AI data centers in the U.S.

Stargate’s equity partners are SoftBank, which will be responsible for funding the venture, along with Oracle and MGX, an AI-focused sovereign wealth fund based in Dubai.

In addition, OpenAI and SoftBank also recently announced a joint venture company that will market enterprise AI solutions to major companies in Japan.

CFOs and payments leaders are faced with a challenge. To unlock the true potential of AI in areas like accounts payable (AP), they must rethink how new systems interact with their existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, ensuring that innovation does not come at the expense of operational stability.

PYMNTS spoke recently with Alex Hoffmann, general manager North America at Edenred Pay, about the challenge CFOs and payments leaders face when trying to unlock the potential of AI in areas such as accounts payable.

“Our industry has been talking about automation for such a long time, yet 84% of the typical AP practitioner’s time is still spent on manual tasks,” said Hoffmann.

All the same, he believes there’s “never been a more exciting time” for accounts payable. The combination of AI, enterprise resource planning (ERP) integration and new methods of payments, such as real-time payments and virtual cards, have created unprecedented opportunities for finance leaders.

“CFOs have a real chance to elevate AP from a back-office function to a strategic powerhouse,” Hoffmann told PYMNTS.

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