OpenAI raises $8.3B in new funding as ARR hits $13B, on track for $20B by year-end

OpenAI just added another $8.3 billion to its coffers, part of a record-breaking $40 billion funding round, according to a report from CNBC, citing people familiar with the deal. The raise is now officially the largest private raise in tech history. The new capital pushes the ChatGPT maker’s valuation to around $300 billion, cementing its position as one of the most sought-after companies in AI.

The pace of the company’s growth is hard to ignore. Annual recurring revenue has jumped from $10 billion in June to $13 billion today, with projections to cross $20 billion before the year wraps up, CNBC reported. Paid business users of ChatGPT have also climbed from three million to five million in just a few months. The latest tranche of funding closed ahead of schedule and was five times oversubscribed, a clear signal of how much demand there is from investors eager to back AI at scale.

Dragoneer Investment Group led this latest $8.3 billion slice with a $2.8 billion commitment. They joined a lineup of heavyweight investors including Blackstone, TPG, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Founders Fund, Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Altimeter, D1 Capital, Tiger Global, and Thrive Capital. SoftBank remains the lead backer of the overall $40 billion raise.

The race for AI dominance isn’t slowing. Anthropic, one of OpenAI’s closest competitors, is in talks to raise between $3 billion and $5 billion led by Iconiq Capital at a potential $170 billion valuation. That would come on the heels of a $3.5 billion round in March that pegged its value at $61.5 billion.

Both companies are turning to Middle Eastern capital to finance their ambitions. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently signaled a change in stance toward Gulf sovereign wealth funds, telling staff in a leaked memo that staying competitive at the frontier of AI development is becoming “substantially harder” without that money.

OpenAI has already moved in that direction, teaming up with Abu Dhabi’s G42 to build a massive data center in the UAE. With billions in fresh funding and an aggressive growth curve, the company is clearly setting itself up for a long stretch at the top of the AI market — but the battle for leadership is far from over.

The new funding will also support Stargate, OpenAI’s $300 billion infrastructure project with SoftBank and Oracle, first unveiled in January. The initiative aims to massively expand U.S. compute capacity as demand for large language models continues to surge.

ChatGPT remains the top AI tool for millions—from developers and marketers to students and enterprise teams. Strong benchmark performance has helped it maintain an edge over rivals like Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Mistral.

Its momentum has been fueled by word-of-mouth adoption and tighter integration into everyday workflows. From its launch in late 2022, ChatGPT hit one million users in five days—and hasn’t slowed down since.