OpenAI’s valuation under scrutiny

Some OpenAI investors are questioning the company’s $852 billion valuation just two weeks after the startup closed a record private funding round. (money.usnews.com) The Financial Times, cited by Reuters on April 14, said the concern is coming from OpenAI’s own backers as the company shifts harder toward enterprise customers and away from a simpler growth story tied to ChatGPT’s consumer reach. (money.usnews.com) OpenAI completed the financing on March 31 at an $852 billion valuation, raising $122 billion from investors including Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank, according to Bloomberg. Amazon committed $50 billion, while Nvidia and SoftBank each put in $30 billion. (bloomberg.com) That money came with a bigger bill for chips, data centers and research. Reuters reported on February 27 that the round was designed to fund OpenAI’s surging compute and research-and-development costs as competition intensified with Anthropic and Google. (money.usnews.com) The enterprise push means OpenAI is trying to lock in large companies that sign recurring software and cloud contracts, not just consumers who pay monthly for ChatGPT. Axios reported on April 13 that OpenAI is tightening ties with Amazon and telling employees that Microsoft had been holding it back. (axios.com) That change puts more attention on margins, because enterprise revenue is usually judged on how predictable it is after sales costs, cloud costs and partner fees are paid. Reuters reported in September 2025 that OpenAI expected its revenue share with commercial partners, including Microsoft, to fall to about 8% by the end of the decade from 20% under current terms. (money.usnews.com) Microsoft has said the partnership is still intact, even after the relationship was rewritten in October 2025. In a company blog post, Microsoft said it kept Azure application programming interface exclusivity until artificial general intelligence, preserved revenue sharing until that milestone is independently verified, and held an OpenAI Group public benefit corporation stake valued at about $135 billion. (blogs.microsoft.com) Investors are also weighing whether some of the demand around OpenAI is intertwined with the same companies financing it. Reuters said in February that Wall Street had already raised concerns about “circular” arrangements in artificial intelligence, where companies invest in one another and sign supply deals that can make growth look cleaner than it is. (money.usnews.com) OpenAI’s case is unusually stark because the valuation is already larger than most public technology companies, while the company is still proving that enterprise demand can turn into durable profits. For now, the fundraising showed investor appetite; the backlash shows some of those same investors want harder evidence. (bloomberg.com)