OpenAI reopens $40 billion funding round: company seeks new capital for worldwide AI growth

SoftBank-led funding round for OpenAI reopens. The $40 billion raise enters its final phase as the company seeks the remaining $30 billion.

OpenAI is preparing to reactivate the record-setting financing it first unveiled in March, inviting existing and new backers to subscribe the last tranche of capital required to complete a $40 billion round.

According to fresh details published on 22 July 2025, the process will formally reopen on 28 July, with SoftBank expected to supply the bulk of the outstanding commitment and a syndicate of institutional investors ready to close the balance. The deal—already the largest single raise in private-market history—now moves into its decisive chapter, one that will determine how aggressively OpenAI can scale its infrastructure and research roadmap over the next three years.

This capital injection is not just a matter of size, but of strategic influence. With this funding, OpenAI positions itself to execute multi-year plans in supercomputing, international expansion, and foundational research—at a scale few private tech companies have ever attempted.

The second phase of a record-breaking deal aims to secure the outstanding $30 billion

SoftBank’s commitment, first announced in March, covered an initial $10 billion, with the remaining $30 billion now up for subscription.

When SoftBank disclosed its intention to invest up to $40 billion in OpenAI on 31 March 2025, the Japanese group wired an initial $7.5 billion, while other investors added $2.5 billion, leaving roughly $30 billion to be called once legal and corporate milestones were met. Those milestones centered on OpenAI’s transition to a public-benefit corporation structure and the associated regulatory reviews in California and Delaware. With those reviews now in their final stages, the company is reopening the round so that additional funds can be transferred as soon as approvals are granted. SoftBank’s revised schedule allocates roughly $22.5 billion of new equity, with a further $7.5 billion split among pension funds, sovereign-wealth vehicles, and several large U.S. asset managers that participated in the first close.

This phase marks a pivotal test of market confidence and coordination among global investors, requiring careful legal navigation and a shared vision for long-term AI growth.

The partnership hinges on a shared vision of large-scale AI infrastructure

The rationale for such a massive raise is rooted in the scale required for next-generation AI.

SoftBank’s investment thesis revolves around the conviction that training frontier models will require bespoke, multi-gigawatt data-centre campuses—an assessment reinforced by OpenAI’s recently announced 4.5 GW expansion of the Stargate programme. By underwriting the bulk of the raise, SoftBank secures a preferential seat at the table as OpenAI transforms from a model developer into an infrastructure operator. For OpenAI, the capital provides headroom to accelerate GPU procurement, expand sovereign-cloud partnerships, and hire several thousand engineers across London, San Francisco, and Tokyo. Sources close to the company note that a significant portion of the proceeds has already been earmarked for long-lead hardware orders, including Nvidia’s GB200 Grace Blackwell clusters.

The infrastructure OpenAI is now building will enable it to train even more powerful models, host sovereign AI for governments, and maintain independence from rival cloud providers.

Regulatory clearance dictates timing but also shapes the deal’s governance

Legal approval is the last hurdle before funds can flow—and determines the framework for OpenAI’s future.

The reopening timetable is driven by regulators who must approve the new public-benefit corporate form that will house OpenAI’s for-profit operations. Lawyers involved in the process indicate that the structure incorporates mission safeguards—such as a capped-profit waterfall—designed to balance shareholder returns with the company’s original nonprofit charter. SoftBank’s remaining commitment is contingent upon these safeguards remaining intact, a clause that explains the two-step funding schedule and the need for a formal relaunch of the round.

This process introduces a new level of transparency and corporate responsibility, setting a precedent for how high-profile AI companies may blend for-profit incentives with mission-driven governance.

Capital deployment focuses on compute, research and global go-to-market expansion

The $40 billion is earmarked for bold, long-range projects.

OpenAI has outlined three pillars for the new money. The first is compute expansion: management plans to push the Stargate capacity plan to at least seven gigawatts by 2027, bringing forward procurement of land, power agreements, and cooling systems. The second pillar is model R&D, specifically the training of successor systems to GPT-4o that integrate multimodal reasoning, long-context memory, and autonomous agent frameworks. The third pillar addresses sales and partnerships: the company will enlarge its regional teams, translate its developer platform into additional languages, and anchor joint ventures in healthcare, finance, and education—sectors where sovereign data requirements demand localized deployments.

By scaling all three areas in parallel, OpenAI aims to remain the pace-setter in the global AI race, ready to support everything from consumer chatbots to national digital infrastructure.

A look back at who broke the story and how coverage evolved

Coverage has shifted from initial headline numbers to details of implementation and governance.

The funding saga began with SoftBank’s own press release on 31 March 2025, which delivered headline figures and a post-money valuation of roughly $300 billion. Reuters carried the news minutes later, followed in quick succession by Axios and TechCrunch. For several months the transaction went quiet while regulatory review progressed. Wired’s report on 22 July 2025 resurfaced the deal, adding the reopening date of 28 July and clarifying that the outstanding $30 billion would move once approvals clear. No earlier outlet provided that timeline, making Wired the first to document the second phase of the financing.

The timeline of coverage highlights how fast-moving and sensitive these negotiations are, with each update offering deeper insight into OpenAI’s strategic direction and priorities.

What the final close could mean for the AI landscape

A fully funded round could reshape the entire global AI ecosystem.

Should the remaining capital arrive on schedule, OpenAI will have raised nearly $64 billion since 2019, arming the company with a war chest comparable to the total venture funding of entire tech sectors. Analysts argue that a fully funded Stargate—and the compute advantage it confers—could widen the gap between OpenAI and both academic labs and Big Tech rivals, potentially accelerating a shift toward dedicated AI super-campuses. Investors, meanwhile, will watch whether SoftBank follows through on its full allocation and whether the new governance framework can reconcile aggressive commercial goals with the nonprofit ethos that still shapes the company’s public narrative.

This milestone could enable OpenAI to set the pace not just in AI innovation, but in defining the standards and governance models for the entire industry.

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