Record-breaking Funding
The biggest signal of recent weeks is the sheer size of the transaction, as OpenAI, according to its official announcement, raised $122 billion in new capital, and following this round, its valuation reached $852 billion, propelling it among the most valuable private tech companies in the world. What matters is not just the number itself, but also where this money is going, as the company plans to use it for chips, data centers, and further capacity expansion, meaning the next phase of AI growth will rely on very expensive infrastructure, not just software development. For investors, this is a significant shift, as OpenAI is no longer viewed as a typical startup but as a company that aims to control a large portion of the value chain, from models to the computational infrastructure on which these models run.
The Battle with Anthropic
Another very important shift is that OpenAI is now openly acknowledging competitive pressure and has sent a memo to investors in which it directly criticizes Anthropic and emphasizes that the competitor operates on a significantly smaller computational scale. In this document, OpenAI states its goal of reaching 30 gigawatts of computing power by 2030, while it expects Anthropic to reach approximately 7 to 8 gigawatts by the end of 2027, sending a clear message that in the next phase of AI, having a powerful model will not be enough, but a massive computational and energy infrastructure will also be necessary.[1] This pressure is also driven by the continued growth of ChatGPT itself, as the service has returned to monthly growth of over 10%, so OpenAI now faces a situation where it must simultaneously manage surging demand while defending its technological superiority against increasingly strong competition.
Tightening Access to AI Capabilities
Another significant issue is security, as OpenAI is in the final stages of developing a new product with sophisticated cybersecurity capabilities that it intends to make available only to select partners. This move follows February’s Trusted Access for Cyber pilot, under which the company granted authorized organizations access to more advanced models for defense applications and allocated $10 million in API credits. From a market perspective, it is also significant that Anthropic has opted for a similarly restricted distribution model with Mythos Preview, indicating that the most powerful and sensitive AI tools will increasingly move into closed environments with tighter controls, higher barriers to entry, and greater oversight of who gains access to them.
IPOs and the Era of Much More Powerful AI
Today, OpenAI is not just talking about products and growth, but also about how the economy should prepare for the advent of much more powerful systems, as it discusses in its public materials, the need for industrial policy for the age of intelligence and the preparation of governments, the energy sector, and the labor market for a fundamental transformation. There is also a capital dimension to this, as CFO Sarah Friar told CNBC that OpenAI will definitely reserve a portion of shares for retail investors in its upcoming IPO, which is a strong signal that the company is already laying the groundwork for one of the most anticipated initial public offerings in the tech sector. This is precisely where the most important part of the whole story comes together, because OpenAI is no longer just a company with a popular product, but a company that is simultaneously positioning itself as a technology leader, an infrastructure player, a security partner, and a future candidate for a major IPO, with the biggest question remaining whether it can justify such a scope of ambition through revenue and profitability in the coming years.
[1] Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and current expectations, which may be inaccurate, or based on the current economic environment which is subject to change. Such statements are not guaranteeing of future performance. They involve risks and other uncertainties which are difficult to predict. Results could differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements.
Sources:
https://openai.com/sk-SK/index/accelerating-the-next-phase-ai/
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/08/openai-ipo-sarah-friar-retail-investors.html
https://www.axios.com/2026/04/09/openai-new-model-cyber-mythos-anthopic
