OpenAI, the developer of the globally popular ChatGPT and a leader in AI applications, has completed an ultra-large funding round totaling $110 billion. This financing values the AI startup at a staggering $730 billion prior to the injection of new capital. The round represents the largest to date for the ChatGPT creator and provides substantial support for its high-cost investments in acquiring greater AI computing resources and top global talent to advance artificial intelligence development. This massive fundraising effort, crucial for covering AI computing expenses, is closely tied to the "AI faith" underpinning the U.S. stock market's super bull run. In recent years, increasingly fervent global investor belief in the "AI investment theme" has served as the core and most powerful bullish driver of the market rally.
On Friday, OpenAI announced that Amazon.com (AMZN), a leader in U.S. e-commerce and cloud computing, invested $50 billion in this round, marking the largest single investment the e-commerce and cloud giant has ever made in any company. The company also stated that SoftBank Group and NVIDIA (NVDA), the dominant force in AI chips, each invested $30 billion. Notably, the new $730 billion valuation does not include the newly raised capital. Following the funding round, OpenAI's valuation has reached approximately $840 billion.
The finalization of OpenAI's $110 billion funding round and its $730 billion pre-money valuation, coupled with massive financial backing from Amazon, SoftBank, and NVIDIA for its AI ambitions, comes as markets continue to actively trade on the theme of massive AI computing investments, often described as "burning cash for compute." This raises questions about a potential resurgence of circular trading patterns reminiscent of the dot-com bubble era.
OpenAI and its most powerful competitor, Anthropic PBC—whose recent activities have significantly impacted global software stock valuations—have both accelerated their fundraising efforts this year. This is to support high-cost bets on top AI talent, AI chip infrastructure, and large-scale AI data center construction, thereby fueling the rapid development of their AI applications. Both AI startups are also increasingly engaging with overlapping venture capital funds and large technology investment firms. For instance, the substantial investment from Amazon, a long-time strong supporter of Anthropic, deepens its relationship with OpenAI. As part of the agreement, OpenAI will utilize Amazon's proprietary Trainium AI ASIC infrastructure series and collaborate with Amazon to develop customized large AI models for the tech giant's own AI engineering teams. OpenAI will also commit an additional $100 billion to Amazon Web Services (AWS) over the next eight years, representing a significant upgrade from a deal announced last November, under which the model developer agreed to use approximately $38 billion in AWS services over seven years.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated in a media interview on Friday, "Amazon brings a lot to the table for us in terms of new demand and market opportunities." Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the large-scale deal "will generate strong returns for Amazon for a very long time."
Microsoft (MSFT), another U.S. tech giant and long-time major supporter of OpenAI through cloud computing, AI infrastructure, and investment, previously served as its exclusive cloud AI infrastructure partner. Microsoft affirmed that its relationship with the developer remains solid. The two companies said in a joint statement on Friday, "Today's announcements do not change the terms of the long-term partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI."
Anthropic raised approximately $30 billion in a funding round earlier this month, with investors including NVIDIA and Microsoft. That round valued Anthropic at $380 billion, including the newly raised capital.
AI Faith vs. AI Bubble These funding commitments represent the latest examples of "circular financing deals" between leading AI startups and chip and cloud computing suppliers. Such partnerships aim to ensure these top global AI developers can meet their enormous computing infrastructure needs. However, the risk is that if actual AI computing demand fails to meet current lofty expectations, these deals could amplify losses and lead to a full-blown "AI bubble" burst, potentially triggering a sharp global stock market decline.
In a recent media interview, Altman downplayed the risks associated with such arrangements. "I understand where the concern comes from. This only makes sense if new revenue keeps flowing into the entire AI ecosystem," he said, emphasizing that much of his focus is on securing larger-scale AI computing infrastructure to meet the massive demand for ChatGPT and OpenAI's other AI applications.
For the U.S. stock market, which has repeatedly hit record highs and entered a new long-term bull market trajectory, and for the MSCI global equity benchmark, the increasingly狂热 "AI faith" among global investors has been the core and most powerful bullish driver. As long as this "AI faith" wave continues to heat up and sweep across global equity markets, the bull run in U.S. and global stocks is likely to continue its strong upward trajectory.
The S&P 500's gain of approximately $30 trillion in market capitalization over the past three years during its "super bull run" has been largely driven by the world's largest tech giants (the "Magnificent Seven") and significantly boosted by chip companies benefiting massively from global ultra-large-scale AI infrastructure investments (such as Micron, TSMC, and Broadcom), the three major memory product makers (SanDisk, Western Digital, and Seagate), and power system suppliers (like Constellation Energy).
A recent report from Bank of America indicates that the global AI arms race is still in its "early to middle stages." Vanguard, one of the world's largest asset managers, noted in a research report that the AI investment cycle might only be 30%-40% complete relative to its eventual peak, but added that the risk of a correction in large-cap tech stocks is indeed increasing. According to Wall Street giants Morgan Stanley, Citi, Loop Capital, and Wedbush, the global wave of AI infrastructure investment, centered on computing hardware, is far from over and is merely at its beginning. Driven by an unprecedented "storm of AI inference-side computing demand," this global AI infrastructure investment cycle lasting until 2030 could reach a staggering $3 trillion to $4 trillion.