OpenAI officially announced on April 6, 2026, the closing of its mega-funding round: $122 billion in committed capital, an unprecedented amount in the history of technology and finance. The company's post-money valuation reaches $852 billion, making it the most valued startup in the world—and placing it on par with giants like Apple or Microsoft in terms of market capitalization. The round was led by Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank, with continued participation from Microsoft, an existing investor in OpenAI. SoftBank co-led the financing with a $50 billion commitment, doubling its stake in what Masayoshi Son calls the "greatest investment opportunity of our lifetime." (
These colossal funds will be primarily allocated to building computing infrastructure. OpenAI plans to deploy massive data centers in the United States, Europe, and Asia to train its next-generation models. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, presented his vision of a "ChatGPT super app" that would combine chat, coding, search, autonomous agents, and multimedia generation within a single interface. The company, which now employs over 5,000 people, remains structurally unprofitable: its estimated annual revenues of $13 billion do not yet cover the training and inference costs of its models. (
The funding round comes amid an increasingly intense AI race. Google DeepMind, Anthropic, Elon Musk's xAI, and Meta AI are each investing tens of billions in infrastructure and research. Chinese competition, led by Baidu, Alibaba, and ByteDance, is also significant. The global generative AI market, estimated at $90 billion in 2025 by McKinsey, is expected to reach $400 billion by 2030. But the question captivating Silicon Valley is simple: who among these players will achieve AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) first—and what will be its consequences? (
Criticism is abundant. European and American regulators are questioning the concentration of power represented by a private company valued at $852 billion, controlling the world's most powerful AI models. OpenAI's recent transition from a "capped-profit non-profit" status to a traditional for-profit structure led to the departure of several co-founders and fueled accusations of betraying its original mission. The California Attorney General is currently reviewing the legality of this conversion. Furthermore, environmental concerns are stark: AI data centers already consume as much electricity as some countries, and OpenAI's planned expansion will exacerbate this carbon footprint. (
Regardless, this funding round marks a turning point: AI is no longer a technological gamble; it represents the largest capital allocation in industrial history. The $122 billion injected into OpenAI exceeds the GDP of over 100 countries. The question is no longer whether AI will transform the global economy, but at what speed—and for whose benefit. For citizens, workers, and democracies, the stakes extend far beyond the technological realm: it is about who will control intelligence, and therefore power, in the 21st century. (
