In Ghibli’s image hype, Openai received $40 billion in funding led by SoftBank, doubled its valuation to $30 billion – You need to know
Sam Altman, founder and CEO of Chatgpt Maker Openai, announced on April 1 that the platform saw a record 1 million users in an hour, thanks to its Ghibli-style image generation feature. Now, due to user engagement, artificial intelligence (AI) tech companies say it has received $40 billion in bonuses from a round led by Softbank Group, valued its valuation to $300 billion twice, according to a Bloomberg report.
“Hundreds of millions of people use Chatgpt every week. This investment helps us push the borders and make AI more useful in daily life,” Sam Altman said in a statement on March 31.
The report quotes PitchBook, saying it was the largest funding round ever, almost increasing Openai’s valuation from $157 billion since October 2024 fundraising to $300 billion this year.
Who is investing in Openai? What is the schedule? Details are here
Bloomberg reported that SoftBank, Masayoshi’s son, is leading the round of financing, with initial investment of $7.5 billion and investor Syndical remittances of $2.5 billion.
Other investors in the Funding Group include sources for Microsoft Corporation, Coatue Management, Altimeter Capital Management and Thrive Capital (rejected to identify).
It is worth noting that a second investment in OpenAI will be worth $30 billion by the end of 2025, including $22.5 billion from Softbank, and $7.5 billion from a group, the same source.
Openai believes that Ghibli-style image launch has gained popularity
Openai launched local image generation to Chatgpt Plus, Pro and Team users on March 26; and released users on April 1. The focus of this feature is the ability to convert any photo into a Ghibli-style work of art and attracts millions of impressive users.
According to Sam Altman, the feature is so popular that due to excessive demand, Openai has to add restrictions for paid users and free users, which is “melt its GPU (graphics processing unit)”.
“It’s so fun to see people like images in Chatgpt. But our GPU is melting. We’re going to introduce a certain rate limit for the time being and we’re working on getting more efficient. Hopefully it won’t be long!” he said on X.
(with Bloomberg input)
