The $115 Billion Reason OpenAI Will Raise More Money

Last week, I reported on how OpenAI updated its financial forecasts for investors. The company expects to spend nearly $115 billion between 2025 and 2029. That’s $80 billion more than it forecast in the first quarter. 

As the chart shows, the startup—recently valued at $500 billion in a sale of employee shares—has been able to handily raise more money as those costs have risen. The tens of billions more needed imply that the company could look beyond venture capital, say by entering into project financing arrangements that use debt, to fund its soaring costs to run its models as well as costs related to data centers to house its servers.