Money rains on OpenAI: the company was given a $4 billion loan

Yesterday, OpenAI closed another funding round, during which the company raised $6.6 billion from investors including Thrive Capital, Microsoft, Nvidia and SoftBank. In addition, the company today received a $4 billion revolving credit facility with an additional $2 billion overdraft, increasing its total liquidity to more than $10 billion. The company’s stock market valuation reached $157 billion.

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«We now have access to more than $10 billion of liquidity, which gives us the flexibility to invest in new initiatives and broad scaling opportunities,” OpenAI said today. “It also confirms our partnership with an exceptional group of financial institutions, many of which are also OpenAI clients.” The company plans to use the funds to invest in research and products, expand infrastructure and attract talent.

OpenAI’s latest round of funding included a long list of investment firms and large technology companies, led by Thrive Capital, which planned to invest $1 billion. Equally large investments were received from Microsoft and Nvidia. According to informed sources, SoftBank, Khosla Ventures, Altimeter Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, MGX, Tiger Global and other funds also took part in the project.

The $4 billion loan opened today for OpenAI (plus $2 billion overdraft) is unsecured. It is provided by a group of leading banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and others. The funds can be used for three years. The interest rate for OpenAI is set at about 6% per annum.

OpenAI’s meteoric rise, which began with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, has become the tech industry’s biggest story in the last couple of years, bringing the concept of generative AI into the mainstream and paving the way for tens of billions of investments in AI infrastructure. The company’s stock market valuation reached $157 billion. Earlier this year, OpenAI was valued at $80 billion, up from $29 billion in 2023.

OpenAI’s revenue in September 2024 was $300 million, up 1,700% from the start of last year. Next year, the company expects to earn $11.6 billion, compared to $3.7 billion in 2024. But it is still a long way from breaking even, as OpenAI is forced to constantly increase its purchases of accelerators to train and run its large language models. People with knowledge of the matter say the company expects losses of about $5 billion this year.

OpenAI has also experienced many growing pains in recent months, including severe staffing losses. CTO Mira Murati, chief scientific officer Bob McGrew and vice president of research Barret Zoph left the company last week.

The departure of key employees occurred against the backdrop of OpenAI’s restructuring from a non-profit organization to a commercial one, which caused a wave of rumors about Sam Altman receiving a stake, which he denied, calling this information “simply not true.” OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor said that “the board of directors discussed whether it would be beneficial to the company and our mission if Sam were compensated in stock, but specific numbers were not discussed and no decisions were made.”