OpenAI's funding chain is under strain, urgently launching a $30 billion financing round, with Star Gate now in jeopardy.

Sure enough, Altman can't deliver on the promises he made himself.

It turns out that Musk was right.

It is reported that OpenAI is seeking a new round of $40 billion in financing, urgently needing funds to support its precarious Stargate project.

The Stargate project was initiated by OpenAI and SoftBank at the beginning of the year to build multiple data centers across the United States, and it is known as the "largest artificial intelligence infrastructure project in history."

Previously, SoftBank led a $10 billion investment, but now Altman is starting to raise the remaining $30 billion.

It turns out that the progress of the first phase of the Stargate project was recently revealed. And it was announced that a new data center service agreement was signed with Oracle. It is estimated that OpenAI will add an additional 4.5 gigawatts of power generation capacity for the Stargate project.

Coincidentally, the value of this contract is also $30 billion.

However, careful netizens noticed that SoftBank Group of Japan, the partner and "financial backer" of the Stargate project, didn't participate this time. Why?

After digging deeper, it was found that, well, they had a conflict.

They had a conflict over the project's location and scale. SoftBank waved its hand and said that if OpenAI doesn't restructure, they will cut their investment.

So now the situation is that they've fallen out with the investor, but the project still needs to burn money.

It should be noted that OpenAI has not achieved profitability yet. Still, Altman had the audacity to say that he would go all - in on top of the original $500 billion budget for the Stargate project.

It's no wonder that OpenAI is short of money.

Sure enough, Altman is over - confident and too bold...

Previously, Musk predicted that Altman wouldn't have enough money for the Stargate project.

He's still too young. Altman didn't take Musk's words to heart.

OpenAI Seeks a New Round of Financing

This new round of financing that OpenAI is seeking from existing and potential investors is a restart of the $40 billion financing round launched in March this year for the Stargate project. Now, it needs to raise the remaining $30 billion, and it is expected to reopen on July 28.

This financing round not only breaks the record for the highest single - round financing in Silicon Valley held by OpenAI itself but also boosts OpenAI's valuation to $300 billion, making it one of the most highly valued private startups in history.

OpenAI is seeking financing to complete the Stargate project led by OpenAI and SoftBank, with the participation of Arm, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Oracle. The total investment could reach up to $500 billion.

Among them, SoftBank is responsible for finance, while OpenAI is responsible for operations.

SoftBank initially fulfilled its promise. In the initial $10 billion financing, SoftBank led with a $7.5 billion investment, and the other co - investors contributed $2.5 billion. The original plan was to continue increasing the investment, with a commitment to contribute 75% of the total.

Unexpectedly, while the initial project was still under construction, OpenAI and SoftBank had a serious disagreement. They had a conflict over issues such as the location of the data center and the investment scale.

SoftBank was excluded from the latest $30 billion data center service agreement that Altman signed with Oracle.

This agreement requires that Oracle will provide 4.5 gigawatts of computing power capacity for OpenAI, running more than 2 million chips.

Adding the 0.5 - gigawatt data center already built in Abilene, Texas, the total capacity exceeds 5 gigawatts... far exceeding the expected plan.

It should be noted that each of Meta's largest data centers only uses 0.15 to 0.2 gigawatts, which is 20 - 30 times smaller in scale.

So SoftBank postponed its investment and put forward a requirement. OpenAI needs to restructure by the end of the year, transforming from a for - profit company to a public - benefit company (PBC). Theoretically, a PBC is designed to prioritize shareholders' returns while also pursuing projects with obvious public benefits. Otherwise, SoftBank will reduce its investment to $10 billion.

The external investment situation is unclear, and OpenAI is currently losing $5 billion annually. Although its annual revenue has reached $10 billion, it is expected to become officially profitable by 2029.

So, to fulfill the data center commitments and the cooperation agreements with companies like Oracle, Altman must expedite the financing process to relieve the operating capital crisis.

As soon as the news of the new round of financing came out, Founders Fund and Dragoneer immediately invested $1 billion this morning for data center and infrastructure construction. However, it is still a drop in the bucket compared to the $30 billion and the subsequent total of $500 billion.

According to reports, OpenAI is still actively negotiating with several potential investors, including Saudi PIF, Indian Reliance, and UAE MGX, hoping to seek additional funds for the Stargate project.

As of today, OpenAI has completed a total of 11 rounds of financing, with a cumulative amount of approximately $57.9 billion. Investors include Microsoft, Nvidia, Sequoia Capital, and Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn.

Among them, OpenAI has a very close relationship with Microsoft. Microsoft provides a large amount of cloud - computing resources for OpenAI, and OpenAI provides Microsoft with exclusive access to its best models.

In addition, OpenAI also plans to raise another $17 billion before 2027 to ensure the further expansion of the Stargate project and the training of the next - generation AI models, such as GPT - 5.

One More Thing

The shortage of operating capital is just the tip of the iceberg of OpenAI's crisis. Previously, the acquisition of the startup Windsurf failed, key employees were poached by Zuckerberg with high salaries one after another, and the company's structural transformation caused dissatisfaction among the founding members... There are signs of trouble within OpenAI.

Meanwhile, the external competitive pressure has also increased sharply. Models such as Gemini and Deepseek have caught up with or even surpassed OpenAI in benchmarks such as reasoning, coding, and cost - effectiveness. The old rival Meta can easily invest tens of billions of dollars in its own data centers.

Netizens said: OpenAI is in danger ⚠️

Even if this round of financing is successful, without sufficient technological moats and with the continuous loss of talent, netizens don't think OpenAI can last long.

Some netizens also pointed out that OpenAI may turn to IPO in the future, but Microsoft may try to stop it.

So, what do you think of OpenAI's current financing? Welcome to leave your comments in the comment section.

Reference Links:

[1]https://x.com/sama/status/1947640330318156074

[2]https://openai.com/index/stargate-advances-with-partnership-with-oracle/

[3]https://www.wired.com/story/openai-fundraising-round-softbank-sam-altman/

[4]https://www.theinformation.com/articles/founders-fund-dragoneer-commit-1-billion-plus-openai-deal

[5]https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1m6lw3h/openai_seeks_additional_capital_from_investors_as/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

This article is from the WeChat official account "Quantum Bit". Author: Lu Yu. Republished by 36Kr with permission.