OpenAI is planning an unprecedented fundraising campaign, aiming to lay the financial foundation for its ambitious AI empire. According to insiders, the company plans to raise up to $100 billion, and if completed at the maximum level, its valuation could surge to $830 billion—this figure not only far exceeds most tech giants but also approaches the threshold of the world's highest market capitalization companies.

It is reported that this round of funding is still in its early stages, with a goal to complete it by the end of Q1 2025. However, such a massive amount is rare in the global capital market, and the terms of the deal may still be adjusted, with no certainty about whether the market has enough investor interest and liquidity to support this scale. Even if part of the funding is secured at a lower valuation, it would set a historical record for a private tech company's single fundraising round.

The background behind this fundraising is the increasing "arms race" pressure that OpenAI faces in the AI competition:

- Infrastructure: Its "Stargate" project requires the deployment of ultra-large-scale AI data centers worldwide, with investments per project potentially reaching hundreds of billions of dollars;

- Model Iteration: The development costs for GPT-5, GPT-6, as well as multimodal, world models, and agent systems are rising exponentially;

- Ecosystem Expansion: From Sora video generation, the App Directory application platform, to hardware and sovereign AI partnerships, business boundaries are rapidly expanding;

- Talent Competition: Top AI researchers now have annual salaries exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars, and team sizes continue to grow.

Previously, OpenAI had established deep capital partnerships with Microsoft, SoftBank, and the Saudi Sovereign Fund, but this $100 billion fundraising round may bring in more sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and large institutional investors, further diluting Microsoft's relative influence and pushing OpenAI toward becoming an "independent super AI company."

Notably, the $830 billion valuation has already exceeded Tesla and Alphabet (Google's parent company), ranking just below Microsoft and Apple. If OpenAI successfully goes public, it could become the world's highest-valued AI-native company. However, a high valuation also means high expectations—investors will demand that it proves: AI can not only change technology, but also continuously create scalable and profitable commercial value.

In this journey toward general artificial intelligence (AGI), funding is not just fuel, but also a weapon defining the future landscape. OpenAI's $100 billion bet may be the ultimate embodiment of the "winner-takes-all" logic in the AI era: either become the next trillion-dollar giant or fall behind in the war of computing power and talent. And the world is holding its breath for the answer.