Startup profile for OpenAI: latest funding, latest known valuation, total disclosed funding, investors, status, sources, and why the company is interesting. Part of the Venture Capital Tracker startup directory.
Venture Capital Tracker logo
Venture Capital Tracker

Startup profile · funding coverage

OpenAI funding, valuation and investors

Frontier AI lab behind ChatGPT, GPT models, and API platform for developers and enterprises.

Keep track of OpenAI

Save this profile to your VCT watchlist for a quick return.

View watchlist

Funding, valuation & investors

Answer-first snapshot

Latest funding

Funding

$6.6B · October 2024

Latest known valuation

Not publicly disclosed

Total disclosed equity funding

$17B

Excludes debt, grants, acquisitions, secondaries, and IPO proceeds.

Current status

private

growth · San Francisco, California, USA

Investors in latest funding

Lead: Thrive Capital

Other: Andreessen Horowitz , Khosla Ventures , Tiger Global Management , Coatue , Altimeter Capital

Sources: latest funding Last verified: 2026-08-29

Overview

OpenAI develops large language and multimodal models (GPT, o-series, DALL·E, Sora) and sells access via ChatGPT subscriptions and developer APIs. Founded as a nonprofit research lab in 2015, it reorganized under a capped-profit structure and partnered deeply with Microsoft for Azure compute and distribution. ChatGPT launched in November 2022 and became one of the fastest-growing consumer apps in history. Enterprise adoption spans coding assistants, customer support, and agent workflows. The company has raised multi-billion-dollar rounds from Thrive Capital, Microsoft, Nvidia, and others to fund training infrastructure.

Why OpenAI is interesting

ChatGPT made generative AI a consumer default — OpenAI's capex-heavy partnership model with Microsoft and massive private rounds rewired how frontier labs fund compute and distribution.

Product & use cases

OpenAI's product stack includes ChatGPT (consumer and enterprise), API access to GPT and embedding models, Codex-powered coding tools, image generation (DALL·E), and research previews like Sora video. Models power third-party apps via API and Microsoft Copilot integrations.

  • Enterprise copilots for knowledge work, support, and sales
  • Developer apps using GPT API for text, code, and agents
  • Consumer ChatGPT for writing, research, tutoring, and coding help
  • Multimodal content generation (images, voice, video previews)

Key facts

  • Oct 2024: $6.6B round led by Thrive Capital at $157B valuation — Reuters
  • Jan 2023: Microsoft extended partnership with reported $10B investment — Microsoft blog
  • ChatGPT launched Nov 2022; 100M+ users within months — industry reports
  • a16z participated in 2024 round alongside Khosla, Tiger, Coatue, Altimeter
  • Covered in Venture Capital Tracker articles on 2026 private capital concentration
  • Aug 28, 2026: notified SpaceX it will wind down the Cursor model contract; proposed shutoff November 12

Funding history (newest first)

Funding

2024-10 $6.6B

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-closes-new-funding-round-66-billion-valuation-2024-10-02/

Investment

2023-01 $10B
  • Microsoft (lead)

Source: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/01/23/microsoftandopenaiextendpartnership/

Investors in our directory

Funds linked from OpenAI's profile — open a fund page for stage focus and related deal articles.

Andreessen Horowitz Thrive Capital Sequoia Capital Khosla Ventures Founders Fund Tiger Global Management Coatue Altimeter Capital

Competitive landscape

Edge: Brand, distribution (ChatGPT), and early-mover model quality created a default AI layer; Microsoft partnership supplies compute and enterprise channel unmatched by independent labs.

Frontier AI is an oligopoly of capital-intensive labs racing on model capability, inference cost, and distribution. OpenAI leads consumer mindshare via ChatGPT but faces margin pressure from inference spend and open-model commoditization. Enterprise deals and API ecosystem lock-in are strategic moats; regulatory and copyright risk remain overhangs.

  • Anthropic direct

    Claude models compete on safety and enterprise; strong Amazon/Google cloud distribution.

  • Google DeepMind direct

    Gemini integrated across Google workspace; massive internal compute and data advantages.

  • Meta AI adjacent

    Open-weights Llama ecosystem; competes for developer mindshare without same consumer ChatGPT analog.

  • xAI direct

    Grok and X distribution; smaller but well-funded challenger on frontier model benchmarks.

Notable stories

  • OpenAI started as a nonprofit in 2015 with Sam Altman and Elon Musk among founders; Musk later departed and the capped-profit structure emerged to fund compute scale.
  • ChatGPT's November 2022 launch triggered the generative AI investment wave — OpenAI became the reference company for enterprise AI budgets.

Industries

AI & Machine Learning Enterprise SaaS Consumer Developer Tools

Related funding articles

Venture Capital Tracker pieces that cover OpenAI's financing or category context.

FAQs about OpenAI

Practical answers founders, operators, and investors typically search for.

OpenAI builds frontier AI models (GPT, o-series, DALL·E) and products like ChatGPT and developer APIs. Enterprises and consumers use its models for text, code, image, and agent applications.
Major investors include Thrive Capital (/fund/thrive-capital), Andreessen Horowitz (/fund/andreessen-horowitz), Khosla Ventures (/fund/khosla-ventures), Sequoia (/fund/sequoia), Coatue (/fund/coatue), and Microsoft. See fundraising rounds for sourced details.
ChatGPT launched publicly in November 2022 and rapidly became one of the most widely used consumer AI applications.
No. OpenAI remains a private company under its capped-profit structure as of August 2026. IPO rumors circulate but no public listing has occurred.
Both build frontier LLMs. OpenAI leads on ChatGPT consumer distribution; Anthropic's Claude competes on enterprise safety positioning and Amazon/Google partnerships.
Microsoft is OpenAI's major cloud and distribution partner, with reported multi-billion-dollar investment and Azure-exclusive API hosting for enterprise customers.
Reuters reported a $6.6B round in October 2024. Total private funding exceeds $10B including Microsoft partnership investments; exact totals vary by source.
Sam Altman is CEO. The company has a nonprofit board governing the capped-profit entity; leadership has seen high-profile board changes since 2023.
ChatGPT offers free tiers with usage limits. ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Enterprise are paid subscriptions with higher limits and features.
Developers access GPT-4 class models, embeddings, fine-tuning, and specialized models through OpenAI's API platform at platform.openai.com.
OpenAI said on August 28, 2026 that it will wind down the Cursor contract after the SpaceX close, with a proposed November 12, 2026 shutoff. See /2026-openai-winds-down-cursor-models.
Website All startups Funding news

By Venture Capital Tracker

Last updated:

Editorial note: AI tools assisted with research, structure, or drafting. Venture Capital Tracker retains human editorial responsibility for factual accuracy, relevance, and source quality before publication.