Tue. 04/01 – OpenAI Closes The Biggest Private Tech Round Ever
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🗓️ 1 April 2025
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Summary
Masa Son came through for OpenAI, to the tune of a $40 billion dollar round at a $300 billion-dollar post-money valuation. Sam Altman says OpenAI is going back to open weights. A new encryption model for Gmail. A new movie strategy for Amazon. And why the Switch 2 represents a new revenue strategy for Nintendo.
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Links:
- OpenAI closes $40 billion funding round, largest private tech deal on record (CNBC)
- OpenAI Finalizes $40 Billion Funding at $300 Billion Value (Bloomberg)
- OpenAI plans to release a new ‘open’ AI language model in the coming months (TechCrunch)
- Gmail is making it easier for businesses to send encrypted emails to anyone (The Verge)
- Amazon’s New Movie Strategy Starts With Theaters (NYTimes)
- Nintendo Departs From Its Founding Philosophy With Switch 2 (Bloomberg)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the TechMean right home for Tuesday, April 1st, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today. |
| 0:08.6 | Masasan came through for OpenAI, a $40 billion round at a $300 billion post-money valuation. |
| 0:15.6 | Sam Altman says OpenAI is going back to Open Waits, a new encryption model for Gmail, a new movie strategy for |
| 0:22.5 | Amazon, and why the Switch 2 represents a new revenue strategy for Nintendo. Here's what you miss |
| 0:28.0 | today in the world of tech. |
| 0:32.8 | OpenAI has closed a new $40 billion round, the most ever raised by a private tech company |
| 0:39.6 | at a $300 billion post-money valuation. SoftBank led the round with $30 billion, but according |
| 0:46.8 | to a source, around $18 billion of that is for Stargate, quoting CNBC. Open AI said it |
| 0:53.6 | plans to use the fresh capital to push the frontiers |
| 0:56.3 | of AI research even further and scale its compute infrastructure according to a blog post. |
| 1:00.9 | About $18 billion of the funding is expected to be used for Open AI's commitment to Stargate, |
| 1:05.7 | according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke anonymously due to the confidential |
| 1:10.0 | nature of the terms of the deal. |
| 1:12.2 | The joint venture between SoftBank, Open AI, and Oracle was announced by President Donald Trump in |
| 1:16.4 | January. The initial funding will be $10 billion, followed by the remaining $30 billion, |
| 1:21.3 | by the end of 2025, the person said. But the round comes with a caveat. Softbank said in an updated disclosure on Monday |
| 1:29.1 | that its total investment could be slashed to as low as $20 billion if OpenAI doesn't restructure |
| 1:34.1 | into a for-profit entity by December 31st. The provision ramps up pressure on OpenAI to pull off |
| 1:40.7 | the for-profit conversion, a plan that will need the blessing of Microsoft and the |
| 1:44.1 | California Attorney General, and has been challenged in court by Elon Musk, who was one of the |
| 1:49.0 | co-founders of Open AI in 2015 when it started as a non-profit research lab. The largest private |
| 1:54.2 | deal before Open AI's round was Ant Group's $14 billion capital raise in 2018. After that was |
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