OpenAI Group PBC showed that it’s still the darling of artificial intelligence investors today, announcing it has raised $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation, the largest funding round in Silicon Valley’s history.

The round, which comes at a time when the company is believed to be gearing up for an initial public offering, will enable it to continue spending enormous amounts of money on AI chips and data center infrastructure and hiring the industry’s top talent.

SoftBank Group Corp. led the round together with Andreessen Horowitz, D.E. Shaw Ventures, MGX, TPG and T. Rowe Price Associates. Others, including previous backers such as Amazon.com Inc., Nvidia Corp. and Microsoft Corp., participated in the round too.

Almost $3 billion came from individual investors through bank channels, the company said. In addition, OpenAI will now be included in a number of exchange-traded funds operated by ARK Investment Management LLC, which will enable more private investors to gain exposure to its stock ahead of the IPO.

OpenAI will gain access to further funds from a number of global banks too, after expanding its revolving credit facility to around $4.7 billion, it said. That facility has not yet been tapped, and it’s likely to increase the company’s financial flexibility as it ramps up its spending on infrastructure.

Following this round, Chief Executive Sam Altman (pictured) will find himself under more pressure than ever to justify the company’s enormous valuation, and he appears to be trying to do that already with some of the language used in today’s announcement. The press release provided updates on the company’s latest financials, saying that it’s now generating in excess of $2 billion in sales per month. “At this stage, we are growing revenue four times faster than the companies who defined the internet and mobile eras, including Alphabet and Meta,” the company said.

OpenAI also provided an update on users. It said it now counts more than 900 million weekly active users of its consumer-based applications. It added that usage of ChatGPT’s search functionality has tripled in the last year, making inroads into Google LLC’s territory

Moreover, its subscriber base has grown beyond 50 million, and its new ad business is generating over $100 million in annual recurring revenue, despite only launching six weeks ago. That’s especially encouraging, since ads enable the company to generate revenue from its large nonpaying user base. It’s the same model that generates billions of dollars per quarter for the likes of Google LLC, Amazon.com Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and other technology titans.

The company claimed to be seeing strong momentum on the enterprise side of its business. It said sales to businesses now account for 40% of its total revenue, up from just 30% a year ago. It’s on track to “reach parity with consumer by the end of 2026,” the company added.

That’s an important detail, because OpenAI has made a lot of noise about switching up its strategy to target enterprise customers, similar to what its rival Anthropic PBC is doing. The company recently announced plans to create a new kind of “superapp” that’s focused on developers and business users, which will incorporate ChatGPT and its agentic offerings. It has also decided to shut down the much-hyped but consumer-focused Sora video generation application, so it can focus its investments on tools that enable workers to increase their productivity, especially coding agents.

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