OpenAI
Mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity
PRIVATESan Francisco, CA~3,500Founded 2015~$180B+ (incl. 2026 round) raised$852B valuationopenai.com
SectorsAI Software
Market Metrics
Valuation (Mar 2026 round)
$852B
+70% from $500B (Oct 2025)
Annualized Revenue (Feb 2026)
~$25B
~$2B/month; up from ~$20B end-2025
ChatGPT Weekly Active Users
~900M+
early 2026; up from ~800M Oct 2025
Stargate JV Commitment
$500B / 4-yr
With SoftBank, Oracle, MGX; Texas Site 1 under construction
Updated at 2026-Q1
Funding History
Total raised: ~$180B+ (incl. 2026 round) · Latest valuation: $852B
| Round | Date | Amount | Valuation | Key Investors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Founding pledge | Dec 2015 | $1B (pledged) | - | Sam AltmanElon MuskReid HoffmanPeter Thiel+1 more |
| Microsoft Partnership I | Jul 2019 | $1B | - | Microsoft |
| Microsoft Partnership II | Jan 2023 | $10B (reported) | - | Microsoft |
| Secondary Tender | Apr 2023 | - | $29B | SequoiaThrive CapitalTiger Global |
| Tender Offer | Feb 2024 | - | $86B | Thrive Capital |
| Series (Primary) | Oct 2024 | $6.6B | $157B | Thrive Capital (lead)MicrosoftNVIDIASoftBank+1 more |
| SoftBank-Led Round | Mar 2025 | $40B (committed) | $300B | SoftBank (lead)MicrosoftCoatueAltimeter+1 more |
| Employee Tender | Oct 2025 | - | $500B | ThriveSoftBankDragoneerT. Rowe Price |
| Primary Round | Mar 2026 | $122B | $852B | SoftBankNVIDIAThrive CapitalMGX |
Updated at 2026-Q1
Product Specifications
| Product | Type | Status |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Consumer chat (Free / Plus / Pro / Team / Enterprise / Edu / Gov) | GA. ~900M weekly active users (early 2026) |
| GPT-5 | Unified frontier model (text, vision, voice, reasoning) | GA (Aug 2025) |
| o3 / o4-mini | Reasoning model family | GA via API and ChatGPT |
| Sora 2 | Text-to-video generation | GA via sora.com (Sep 2025) |
| DALL-E 3 | Text-to-image generation | GA, integrated into ChatGPT |
| Realtime API / Voice Mode | Low-latency speech-to-speech | GA via API |
| Operator / Agent Mode | Browser-using autonomous agent | GA in ChatGPT Plus/Pro (2025) |
| Codex (new) | Cloud software engineering agent | GA in ChatGPT (May 2025) |
| OpenAI API | Developer platform (models, fine-tuning, embeddings, batch, files) | GA |
| Stargate Datacenters | Infrastructure JV with SoftBank + Oracle + MGX | Under construction (Texas Site 1) |
Updated at 2026-Q1
Partnerships & Investors
MicrosoftStrategic / Investor / Cloud
Exclusive Azure relationship through 2030 (per renegotiated terms); cumulative ~$13B+ investment; revenue share. Right of first refusal on new compute capacity post-2030 removed in 2025 amendments.
OracleStrategic / Cloud
Stargate co-lead; ~4.5 GW Texas datacenter cluster contracted Jul 2025 (reported $300B over 5 years per WSJ).
SoftBankInvestor / Strategic
Led $40B March 2025 round; Stargate co-lead with $19B initial commitment.
NVIDIAStrategic / Supplier
Primary GPU supplier (H100, H200, GB200, GB300); NVIDIA-led $100B compute commitment to OpenAI Sep 2025 (Vera Rubin systems).
AMDStrategic / Supplier
6 GW MI300/MI400 deployment agreement Oct 2025; equity warrants granted to OpenAI.
AppleDistribution
ChatGPT integrated into Siri and Apple Intelligence (iOS 18.2, Dec 2024).
Anthropic, Google, MetaFrontier-Model Safety Forum
Member of Frontier Model Forum; participates in NIST AI Safety Institute consortium.
BroadcomStrategic / Custom Silicon
Co-developing OpenAI custom inference ASIC; volume production targeted 2026.
Updated at 2026-Q1
Key Milestones
Dec 2015
Company Founded
Founded as nonprofit by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Wojciech Zaremba
Jun 2018
GPT-1
First generative pre-trained transformer published
Feb 2019
GPT-2
1.5B parameter model; staged release over concerns of misuse
Mar 2019
Capped-Profit Restructure
Created OpenAI LP under nonprofit parent; enables outside investment
May 2020
GPT-3
175B parameter model; API launched in private beta
Nov 2022
ChatGPT Launch
Hits 1M users in 5 days, 100M in 2 months; fastest consumer product to that scale
Mar 2023
GPT-4
Multimodal model with image input; powers ChatGPT Plus
Nov 2023
Board Crisis
Sam Altman fired Nov 17, reinstated Nov 22; board reconstituted
May 2024
GPT-4o
Omni-modal model with native voice; free-tier upgrade
Sep 2024
o1 Reasoning Models
First reasoning-focused frontier model (Strawberry); chain-of-thought trained
Jan 2025
Stargate Joint Venture
$500B 4-year US datacenter buildout with SoftBank, Oracle, MGX; Texas Site 1 underway
Aug 2025
GPT-5
Unified model replacing GPT-4o, o3, and routing logic; default in ChatGPT
Oct 2025
$500B Secondary
Employee tender doubles March's $300B valuation in 7 months
Mar 2026
$122B Round at $852B
Closes a $122B primary round at an $852B valuation, among the largest private financings ever and widely read as a pre-IPO step
Updated at 2026-Q1