OpenAI valuation under scrutiny
Some investors are publicly questioning OpenAI's $852 billion valuation as the company shifts more toward enterprise customers. Reporting says backers are worried about heavy compute spending and persistent losses as OpenAI and peers chase enterprise revenue, prompting closer scrutiny of strategy and monetisation. (reuters.com (ft.com))
Some OpenAI investors are questioning whether the company’s $852 billion valuation can hold as it pivots harder toward corporate customers. (reuters.com) The scrutiny surfaced in a Financial Times report published April 14, after OpenAI closed a $122 billion funding round on March 31 at an $852 billion post-money valuation. OpenAI said the new capital would fund more compute capacity and expand products including ChatGPT, Codex and enterprise tools. (ft.com) (openai.com) OpenAI has also been signaling the shift itself. On April 8, Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser said demand was moving from “basic model access” toward business systems, with products including ChatGPT Enterprise, Frontier and company-wide AI agents. (openai.com) The question behind the valuation is not whether OpenAI is growing. It is whether revenue from business customers can outrun the cost of the chips, data centers and electricity needed to train and run its models. (reuters.com) (openai.com) That pressure is showing up across the sector as companies race to sell artificial intelligence tools inside large organizations, where contracts are bigger but sales cycles are slower and rivals are entrenched. The Financial Times reported that OpenAI’s backers are also watching competition from Anthropic more closely as both groups chase enterprise budgets. (ft.com 1) (ft.com 2) OpenAI’s valuation has climbed at unusual speed. The company announced a $157 billion post-money valuation in October 2024, then a $300 billion post-money valuation in March 2025, before reaching $852 billion in March 2026. (openai.com 1) (openai.com 2) (openai.com 3) The company argues that scale is the point. In its March 31 funding post, OpenAI said it was becoming “core infrastructure for AI,” and in a February policy post it said maintaining United States leadership in artificial intelligence would require far more electricity than the country currently provides. (openai.com 1) (openai.com 2) OpenAI has also been building distribution for that enterprise push through partnerships. It announced a multi-year deal with Amazon on February 27, and Snowflake said on February 2 that OpenAI models would be made available to Snowflake’s 12,600 customers through Cortex AI. (openai.com) (markets.ft.com) For now, the debate is less about whether OpenAI can sell artificial intelligence than about how much future profit investors must assume to justify an $852 billion price tag. That is why the company’s next stretch of enterprise growth will be watched as closely as its model releases. (reuters.com) (ft.com)
